As you learned on the previous page, the Eatwell Guide gives us lots of hints and tips on how to include a wide variety of foods in our diet. It is important to include a wide variety of foods in our diet as it helps to make our diet healthy and balanced. A healthy, balanced diet will give our body all of the energy and nutrients it needs.

A balanced diet can help to prevent certain lifestyle diseases (you learned about these in Session 1). By making sure we eat healthily, we can reduce our risk of developing serious health problems, such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

A balanced diet can also help us to lose weight or to maintain a healthy weight. Do you remember the energy balance that we learned about in Session 1? Our energy balance is simply the difference between our energy (calories) contained in the food we eat and our body’s energy requirements.

If we eat a balanced diet and consume the same amount of energy as we burn during our daily activities, then our weight will pretty much stay the same.

However, if we consume more energy than we need, then we will gain weight (our body stores the excess energy as fat). Similarly, if we don’t consume enough energy to meet our requirements, then we will lose weight.