A Healthy Diet - Part of Your Self Improvement Repertoire

I would guess that not many young people set out to have a healthy diet. I know that as a teenager, and in my early twenties, I did not have a healthy diet plan, or care about a healthy diet for my heart. I enjoyed a variety of food, and I loved beer, but did not associate it with health.

It was only really when I had a son who had dietary problems that I took any interest in what constitutes a healthy diet. However, my interest then extended beyond my son's problem and into my own. For years I had suffered from an arthritic condition called ankylosing spondylitis, and that too may have been affected by diet.

All that was 25 years ago, and even in the 1980's in the UK, doctors cared ltitle for any connection between health and diet. But I was starting to learn differently, and fortunately doctors are now far more aware of diet in connection with health, and will often use a nutritionist.

There is probably no such thing as a perfect diet that will be healthy for everybody; everyone's body is individual. However, there is little doubt expressed these days that a "good" diet will be beneficial to your health and help to build your immune system, prevent heart problems, and even reduce the risk of cancer in some cases.

What, though, is a healthy diet? Over the last two decades I have included more fruit and vegetables in my diet, and cut down on fat. But rather than go further into my own experiences and views I have included two articles below on what the writers consider to be a healthy diet.

As with any aspect of self improvement, knowledge gives you power. With health, that is even more so, as learning about what foods and supplements are good for you, and bad, and the dangers of Western prescription drugs, could transform your life, and maybe even prolong it. You will never learn too much about nutrition, natural medicine, and what constitutes a good diet or a bad diet. There are new scientific study results coming out almost every day, so there is an endless amount of material to get your teeth into.

For up to date information on what the US government considers to be a healthy diet, it is worth regularly visiting the Food Pyramid web site. However, there are many alternative views, so it is worth keeping up to date with a few contrary sites as well, such as Newstarget.