Healthy eating starts with knowing the food groups
To understand what healthy and balanced nutrition means, it is first necessary to know the basic food groups. Foods are made up of four food groups: milk and dairy products, meat and meat products, fruits and vegetables, and grains. The prerequisite for healthy and balanced nutrition is to consume a certain proportion from each food group, on a rotating basis. Consuming too little or too much of any food group can cause complications in the body.
Just like fingerprints, everyone’s metabolism is different from another’s. For this reason, generic nutritional advice should be avoided. There are various tests available to perform an individualized assessment. These tests can identify food allergies, food intolerances, and food sensitivities. In this way, foods that a person cannot digest and that cause inflammation in the body can be removed from the diet, allowing for a healthy gut flora. The body is a whole, and the intestines hold a very important place within that wholeness.
We can classify foods according to their chemical structure as organic and inorganic; according to their source as plant-based and animal-based; according to their function in the body as energy-providing, building/repairing, and regulating; and as energy-providing foods (macronutrients) and those that enable biological processes to run (micronutrients).
Regardless of the classification method used, what matters in a healthy nutrition program is to consume the basic groups in balanced proportions and on a rotating basis.
MACRONUTRIENTS
Macronutrients are the basic food groups:
- Protein (10-20%)
- Carbohydrates (55-60%)
- Fat (20-25%)
Combinations of vitamins and minerals are used all over the world, both as an adjunct to treatment protocols for various diseases and to support daily nutrition and protect against subclinical conditions. Because vitamins and minerals cannot be produced by the body itself, they must be obtained through food. It is therefore very easy to see the relationship between nutrition and a healthy immune system. However, numerous factors—such as climate, soil, whether the produce is raw or ripe, harvesting and cooking methods, and transport and storage—can cause vitamin loss in fruits and vegetables. In such cases, we may need to obtain the vitamins essential to our health from various external supplements. Vitamins, also called micronutrients, are consumed in much smaller amounts than macronutrients and contain no calories.
Vitamins are divided into two groups: fat-soluble and water-soluble. Vitamins A, D, E, and K are fat-soluble vitamins; their synthesis requires cholesterol, they can be stored in fatty tissue, and they are released when needed. Taking these vitamins after meals increases their absorption. The other water-soluble vitamins, by contrast, cannot be stored.
In my next article, I will discuss vitamins, another pillar of the basic food groups.
For more information on this and similar topics, you can refer to my book “The Anti-Inflammatory Nutrition Guide.”