Healthy diet

A healthy diet (or healthful diet) is a diet that maintains or improves overall health, providing the body with essential nutrition: water, macronutrients such as protein, micronutrients such as vitamins, and adequate fibre and food energy. A healthy diet may contain fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and may include little to no ultra-processed foods or sweetened beverages. The requirements for a healthy diet can be met from a variety of plant-based and animal-based foods, although additional sources of vitamin B12 are needed for those following a vegan diet. Various nutrition guides are published by medical and governmental institutions to educate individuals on what they should be eating to be healthy. Not only advertising may drive preferences towards unhealthy foods. To reverse this trend, consumers should be informed, motivated and empowered to choose healthy diets. Nutrition facts labels are also mandatory in some countries to allow consumers to choose between foods based on the components relevant to health. The lack of a healthy diet contributes massively to the global disease burden, imposing immense health, economic and social costs. In 2025 only 30.8% of children aged 6 to 23 months, and 62.7% of women aged 15 to 49 years, consumed a minimally diverse diet. In 2024, 31.9% of the global population could not afford a healthy diet, compared to 36.9 percent in 2020 and 38.4 percent in 2017. In 2024, unaffordability was the highest in Africa (66.6% of the population), and much lower in Asia (28.1%), Latin America and the Caribbean (27.4%), Oceania (19.6%) and Northern America and Europe (5.0%). This is often a political issue. The Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization have formulated four core principles of what constitutes healthy diets. According to these two organizations, health diets are: Adequate, as they meet, without exceeding, our body's...