All types of healthy diets have a few qualities in common: a variety of foods, balanced across food groups and macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein, and fats), adequate amounts that provide the calories and essential nutrients necessary to maintain and promote optimal health. Considering the high rates of obesity in the United States, another key component to remember is moderation—not overindulging in any one type of food or in potentially harmful foods, such as those that contain unhealthy levels of fat, sugar, and salt. (INFOGRAPHIC 2.1)

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Question 2.1

First, let’s consider variety: Quite simply, this means choosing different foods, even within the individual food groups. For example, the more varied your consumption of fruits and vegetables, the more likely you are to get a broad range of essential nutrients and health benefits from compounds, such as phytochemicals found in those foods (see Chapter 1). One way to ensure variety is to follow the advice to “eat a rainbow” by choosing foods of different colors, such as red peppers, green spinach, and orange carrots. Here’s a clue that food deserts don’t provide the basics of a healthy diet: Most of the food at corner convenience stores and fast-food restaurants is beige and brown—bread, soda, chips, and French fries, for instance.

Another important component of a healthy diet is balance: the right proportion of foods from each of the food groups, and the appropriate amounts of calories, macronutrients, vitamins, and minerals. When we eat a variety of foods from each food group, it is easiest to achieve a balanced diet. Again, living in a food desert can make it difficult to eat a balanced diet, since most of the food available has disproportionately large amounts of calories, unhealthy fats, and refined carbohydrates, such as foods with added sugar and white bread.

Indeed, food deserts often provide people with more-than-adequate calories—there are plenty of sodas, “junk” foods, and other calorie-rich options to choose from. But adequacy doesn’t just mean getting enough calories; it also includes getting enough essential nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, and proteins, as well as other beneficial components of a healthy diet, such as fiber and phytochemicals. Recall from Chapter 1 that the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) help us determine adequate and appropriate intake for these dietary components based on our age, sex, and life stage.