Food thus constitutes the foundation of health of humans and animals. No single food – with the exception of breast milk for about the first 6 months of life – can provide all the nutrients in the amounts needed for good health. Dietary patterns that include a wide variety of nutritious foods and water are more likely than restricted diets to meet nutrient requirements and confer health benefits.
Human health is a function not only of medical care but of the overall integrated development of society – cultural economic, educational, social and political. It also depends in a number of supportive services, nutrition, improvement in environment and health education.
Food being the basic vehicle of satisfying man’s hunger, it is intimately woven into the physical economic, psychological, intellectual and social life of human beings.
To achieve and maintain a healthy weight, be physically active and choose amounts of nutritious food and drinks to meet your energy needs.
*Children and adolescents should eat sufficient nutritious foods to grow and develop normally. They should be physically active every day and their growth should be checked regularly.
*Older people should eat nutritious foods and keep physically active to help maintain muscle strength and a healthy weight.
Nutrition studies suggests that risk of diabetes and heart disease can be reduced by eating plenty of vegetables and fruit daily, limiting consumption of foods that are high in calories but offer little nutritional value, and maintaining a healthy weight.
Food has several dimensions, the most obvious being the quantitative one. Insufficiency of food leads progressively from mild discomfort to severe hunger and ultimately to death. Its qualitative dimension is equally important, because low quality or improper diets lead to malnutrition and disease.
Food affects health life spam, physical fitness, body size and meal development. Food also has a cultural dimension. The food habits of people are part of their cultural and emotional life, and preferences for foods are ingrained. People may cling for generations to their food habits, which may become rituals and patterns of daily routine life.
Food for human health
