What is a diet?

A diet comprises those foods that one lives on from day to day. Generally, humans are either omnivores or vegetarians. Omnivores are people whose diets consist of plant and animal food sources; whereas, vegetarians live on vegetables and fruits only.

The New Webster’s Dictionary of English Language defines diet as; the food and drink normally taken by an individual or a group or a prescribed course of what is to be eaten and what is not. This definition takes into account the fact that what you drink e.g. Milk, water, beer, whisky etc is part of your diet.

There is a saying that, you are what you eat, meaning that your diet can go a long way to predict what you will become in future considering that some diets confers longevity and some kill you fast.

Imagine a diet of ice creams and chocolates, or beer, whisky and beef etc.

Problems of Dieting

Diets come with some problems especially bad diets. When a person becomes addicted to a particular unhealthy diet, there is predisposition to several diseases simply because of the diet. The subject of healthy dieting is now a very popular one across the globe and more and more people are realizing the need to develop a well thought out diet deemed fit for themselves. High fat diet may cause stroke, hypertension, coronary heart disease, diabetes, obesity and low self esteem.

Low Protein diet results in malnourishment and depressed immune system, anemia (this is common in vegetarians), and in children kwashikor, a form of protein energy malnutrition.

Dietary Supplement

It is becoming more difficult for one to actually consume all the nutrients needed for proper functioning of the body from food alone and as such it is common to see people who eat less because of their diet but try to supplement with pills.

Some of the pills are to induce anorexia and help you reduce the number of times you eat as well as the amount of food per day. In selecting these supplements, a thorough research is necessary as they are too many dietary pills and fat binders out there that fail to achieve what they promise.

Dieting is an important aspect of healthy living and everyone needs to be on one form of diet or the other. Yours may have been prompted by an illness, or maybe you want to loss weight, you are trying to maintain weight loss or you do not just want to grow fat. Before any decision is taken on what kind of diet you should be on, your doctors advice must be sort-only he is in the position to advice you appropriately.

Dieting will only make sense when we decide on it and stick to it as well. It is very important that people have control over the things they eat. Diet is the biggest single determinant of whether or not we will have good health. It affects health more than any other thing one can thing of.