Get advice about nutrition essentials and making healthier choices for a balanced diet. You should eat:
- lots of fruit and vegetables - at least 5 a day
- more starchy foods such as wholegrain bread, pasta, rice and potatoes
- less fat (especially saturated fat), salt and sugar
It is also important to eat a variety of foods to make sure you get all the nutrients your body needs.
Eight Tips for Eating Well
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has eight practical tips to help you make healthier choices and eat well:
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Base your meals on starchy foods, to increase the fibre in your diet
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Eat lots of fruit and vegetables - you should have at least five different portions every day
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Eat more fish, including a portion of oily fish each week
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Cut down on saturated fat and sugar
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Try to eat less salt – no more than 6g a day
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Get active and try to be a healthy weight - being overweight can lead to heart disease, high blood pressure or diabetes
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Drink plenty of water - about six to eight glasses (1.2 litres) of water or other fluids every day, but cut down on alcohol
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Do not skip breakfast - try a bowl of wholegrain cereal with some sliced banana and a glass of fruit juice
Nutrition Essentials
To find out more, go to the FSA's Eatwell website, including a Nutrition Essentials section with a detailed guide to different types of food.
Meet the characters of the FSA’s Strictly Yum Dancing show, who illustrate the eight tips for eating well. You can also find a guide to health issues including obesity, heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
In this section you can get information about eating 5 a day, reducing salt and using front-of-pack nutrition labels on food to help you make healthier choices. Check out our pages for children, teenagers and students too.
Use the Eatwell Plate to make healthy eating easier to understand. It shows the types and proportions of foods we need to have a healthy and well balanced diet.
