What do you mean by “a healthy diet”?

To understand the meaning of a healthy diet for everyone, I had conducted nasty research in my studio. Simply asking people to use one sentence to describe what does “healthy diet” mean to them? And if that ideal healthy diet is 100%, what level are they in right now?

Findings

Some common theme emerges from this research.

Body and Mental Health

A healthy diet means a diet that could make your body and mind sustainable. I think it requires the ability to be self-reflective about yourself which is not commonly found in many people.

Balanced

A healthy diet means a die that is balanced. The tricky part is the word “balance”. It could be a balance between raw food vs. processed food or carb, protein, veggie, fruit. (Chen mentioned the rainbow principles. It is about having as more colors as possible in your plate)

Some interviewees push to certain extreme and talk about simply more fruit and veggie.

Avoidance

Besides balanced, people talks about avoiding certain kinds of food including processed food, fried food or high-fat food.

Persuasion

I believe there is an unconscious element in it or you could say the persuasion approach.

• Portion Control: Portion control can be conducted by changing the size of the plate. It is a behavior change technique through persuasion.
• Limited Sugar and sodium: While people’s flavor is settling down into a certain taste. It is hard to ask them to see through the food label to understand their sugar and sodium consumption. It is a behavior change technique through persuasion.

Overlay between healthy eating and sustainable eating