It is difficult to maintain a healthy diet no matter how important it is. A balanced diet is necessary for everyone, irrespective of age, gender, health conditions, or mental state. Now, there are several factors affecting a balanced diet. Hence, it is important to consume a mix of all necessary nutrients for optimal brain function and physical health.
But, we do agree that despite the awareness and knowledge of how to achieve a balanced diet, striking the right balance is not invariably easy to do. And certainly, maintaining any certain diet is even more difficult. Therefore, what can help you remember the achieve a balanced diet is by understanding the nature of the food that you consume, and this way, you will be able to help yourself to stay on track. Read on to learn about the top factors affecting a balanced diet
Benefits of a Balanced Diet
A balanced diet ensures that the necessary amount of all nutrients reaches the body regularly. The lack of a balanced diet might cause the following problems:
- Fatigue or daytime sleepiness
- Cognitive shortcomings
- Irritability
- Unwanted weight loss or gain
- Dullness of skin
- Hair loss
- Brittle bones
- Frequent illnesses due to low immunity
- Cardiac issues
- Neurological issues
- Kidney or liver problems due to an excess of some food groups
The benefits of a balanced diet would be a healthy body and a happy mind as well as glowing skin and hair. Imagine fighting the possibilities of the above problems with just right eating!
This list of likely problems that can stem from a lack of a balanced diet is not all. A myriad of health issues arises from the lack of a balanced diet. So, we need to focus on the factors affecting a balanced diet and strive to achieve the balance.
Factors Affecting a Balanced Diet
Several factors affect our ability to maintain a balanced diet. To be able to have a balanced diet, we need to focus on the following factors.
Time
Not having the time to cook fresh and healthy meals is the commonest problem today. Many people live alone or with other people who also go to work for the better part of the day. People have no choice but to grab a bite of whatever they find.
This problem can be solved with a lot of hard work for weekly meal preps. Even then, the food isn’t exactly fresh no matter how well it is stored. It is a good idea to try to rely on food that doesn’t need to be cooked, hence come into the picture are fruits, yogurt with chia or flax seeds, salads that take little time to make, and sandwiches with healthy stuffing that have been prepped a while ago. This is how we can eat better if not perfectly.
Habits
People who eat healthy since childhood find it less difficult to eat healthy as adults. Once junk food or high-carb diets make their way into our everyday eating preferences, it becomes difficult to get rid of them. This does not mean that people who had not been into healthy eating for a long time cannot embrace a healthy diet now. The discipline required will be higher but it is possible to achieve.
Education
A Cambridge study found that about 59 percent of educated middle-aged people and 47 percent of lesser-educated middle-aged people eat healthily. Speculations say education arms us with knowledge about our body’s needs. But socioeconomic factors play a big role. People who can afford higher education can also afford the money and time for a healthy diet every day.
Money
Not that rich people don’t eat unhealthily. But they have easily available resources should they choose to eat healthily – fresh groceries, expensive berries, expensive wines instead of the cheap beer even for indulgence. They can also afford to pay a house help for cooking fresh healthy meals. However, people who are not as rich may indeed have to struggle as they have to cook the food themselves even though they may not have adequate time at hand.
Lifestyle
People living alone often are more prone to order food from restaurants rather than preparing a balanced diet. If you live alone, please make the extra effort to treat yourself to healthy meals even if it feels exhausting. Your future self will thank you.
The truth is there are today various healthy food items that will provide several of the necessary nutrients for proper nourishment. As a result, it is actually not that difficult to design and maintain a balanced diet if the factors affecting a balanced diet, like money and time are on our side. But even if some of the factors are not on our side, we can make the most of what we have with some prior planning and information.
