Healthy eating is not about counting calories, rigid limitations or avoiding the foods you love. Rather, having a healthy diet is about having plenty of energy, improving your wellbeing and immune system, preventing chronic conditions, boosting mood, and therefore feeling great! 

The strong relationship between nutrition and health has already been known for several decades. As a matter of fact, the World Health Organisation recognizes the importance of a healthy diet in preventing all forms of malnutrition, as well as a range of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancer [1]. 

However, ensuring healthy diets for the entire global population has become one of the world’s greatest challenges. The exponential growth of processed foods production, together with rapid urbanization and continuous lifestyle changes, has led to a significant shift in current dietary patterns. Often this leads to an insufficient consumption of fruit, vegetables and legumes which results in a diet low in fibre on the one hand, and a higher intake of refined carbohydrates, free sugars, salt, and alcohol which results in a diet high in energy and saturated fats on the other hand. Food systems not only struggle to deliver healthy foods to all but also threaten climate stability and ecosystem resilience [1,2]. Taken together, the outcome prospects to be quite negative: the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) may not be reached, as well as the Paris Agreement, and future generations may inherit a markedly deprived planet where people may run a higher risk of malnutrition and preventable disease.

A substantial global transformation of food systems and a significant shift towards healthy dietary patterns are therefore urgently needed [3]. Food systems need to be innovated to reduce food waste, improve food production practices, and deliver affordable healthy diets for all. Furthermore, people should start making healthier eating choices, not only for their own health but also for a sustainable future. 

This is the reason why Verdify, in its run to pursue its aim to make healthy eating the easiest choice, created two platforms: SwapMeals (an AI-powered platform of healthy recipes), and the Noory (the first nutrition passport for personalized nutrition). Noory safely collects personal information about dietary patterns, including eating preferences, allergies, specific dietary requirements, and lifestyle habits, and allows people to get highly personalized and healthy recipes. (*For more information about the Verdify-ID see previous blogpost*link).

References:

1. World Health Organisation (2020). Healthy diet. Consulted on 19 February from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/healthy-diet 
2. The EAT-Lancet commission.(2020). Healthy Diets From Sustainable Food Systems. Consulted on 19 February from https://eatforum.org/content/uploads/2019/07/EAT-Lancet_Commission_Summary_Report.pdf 
3. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The state of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020. Consulted on 19 February from http://www.fao.org/3/ca9692en/online/ca9692en.html#