Mas

larger view

Eating well is one of the best things you can do to stay healthy. A good diet gives you more energy, improves your physical and mental well-being, and decreases your risk of disease. This advice will help you learn more about:
•The benefits of healthy eating
•Good food choices
•Nutrients you need
•A healthy weight for you

A Healthy Lifestyle
Many health problems in the United States are linked to poor diet and lack of exercise. These include cardiovascular disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, obesity, constipation, and certain cancers. By maintaining a healthy lifestyle that combines good food choices and exercise, many of these conditions can be prevented or controlled.

Food Choices
A well-balanced diet is crucial to good health. Your body needs a regular supply of nutrients to grow, replace worn-out tissue, and provide energy. How much of each nutrient you need each day is called the recommended daily allowance (RDA) or, more recently, the dietary reference intake (DRI). You can get your DRI of nutrients from food as well as from supplements. However, most of the nutrients you need should come from the foods you eat.

To be sure that your diet gives you enough nutrients, you need to know which ones are in the foods you eat. MyPyramid (www.MyPyramid.gov) can help you make healthy food choices. MyPyramid takes into account your age, sex, and how much you exercise every day. It shows the number of servings you should have each day from each of these six food groups:
1. Grains
2. Vegetables
3. Fruit
4. Oils
5. Milk
6. Meat and beans

MyPyramid lists a variety of foods in each food group and offers a sample weekly menu to help you get most nutrients out of the foods you eat.

On packaged foods, you can use the food labels to find out what nutrients they provide. A food label lists the serving size of the product and how many servings are in the package. This will help you decide how much of the product you should have for one serving. A label also will show how much of the DRI of each nutrient the serving supplies. Your daily goal is to reach 100% of each nutrient. One way of making healthy food choices is to compare food labels of similar products.