Taste is everything when it comes to food.

For many years, the medical professionals have reported about the positive effects of a healthy and balanced diet. They have been instrumental in bringing nutritional education into the schools, on the news, and to the public in general. Despite these facts, many people do not eat a healthy diet. Knowing what healthy diets are is the one step to becoming smarter about what the body needs for survival. Another step is knowing how to look up the nutritional values of your food. The other step is to know what factors influence what we eat. The three main factors are the economy, food supply, and taste. Though the economy, and the food supply does influence a person’s diet to a large degree, but taste outweighs the other three factors. Concerning food, there are limits to what a person will eat, and though there are some common things that humans will not, or cannot eat, most of it is individual taste. Because of the importance of taste in diets, many choose taste over nutrition. For many years people have thought, if it is nutritional it has less taste, because most nutritional foods do not have the taste that people look for. Thankfully there are ways to increase the taste of nutritional food without negating the value of it. A nutritious meal that taste good can be made by finding nutritious alternatives for the taste is liked. A balanced diet is important to health, and should be taken seriously the body’s overall health.
With all the information about diet and health, it may seem difficult to know what the best diet is for yourself. According to the USDA, a healthy diet is a balanced diet of the food groups, dairy (Dairy substitutes for vegans), fruits, grains, protein, and vegetables. When these recommendations are followed, and in the proper portions, the body gets the proper amount of the nutrients, vitamins and minerals that will keep the body healthy. Nutrients, vitamins and minerals are important by providing bodies with the nutrients that it needs to maintain the immune system, blood flow, and energy just to name a few things. All of this defines what to look for in food, and the portions of food that a body needs, now to look at other factors. According to Donatelle (2011), “with all the factors that influence our dietary choices and the wide array of foods available, the challenge of eating for health increases daily” (p. 255). There are some factors that influence diets, time constraints, religious beliefs, and cultural traditions just to name some of the top influences on them. In most cases, the effects of these factors can be lessened simply by creating a solid diet plan, and sticking to it. A body’s health depends on making sure that the diet is balanced, and the body is getting the nutrition that it needs to keep energized and to fight off infections and disease (Donatelle, 2011). Knowing what makes a healthy diet, and what the benefits of eating healthy are is really important to your health. After learning about the diets, it is important to know how to look up the nutritional value of the food.
When trying to find out the nutritional value of the food, the best tool to use is the nutritional label. Knowing how to read the nutrition labels on food is important, because once a person learns how to read one, they know how to find the nutritional value. The first thing is to look at is the serving size, shows how much of calories, nutrients, vitamins and minerals are in the food. The second thing is concerning calories, knowing how many calories your body needs per day, this is dependent on your age, weight, and health needs, talk to your doctor or nutritionist about it, the recommended amount of calories from fat should not exceed 35% of the total calorie count. The third thing is a healthy diet is low in the fat, cholesterol, and sodium for a body’s over all health. Concerning trans-fat should be avoided as a rule, as it is known to increase several types of