Recommendations : World Health Organization

The World Health Organization (WHO) makes the following 5 recommendations with respect to both populations and individuals:^[3]

• Eat roughly the same amount of calories that your body is using. A healthy weight is a balance between energy consumed and energy that is 'burnt off'.
• Limit intake of fats, and prefer less unhealthy unsaturated fats to saturated fats and trans fats.
• Increase consumption of plant foods, particularly fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains and nuts.
• Limit the intake of sugar. A 2003 report recommends less than 10% simple sugars.^[4]
• Limit salt / sodium consumption from all sources and ensure that salt is iodized.

Other recommendations include:

• Essential micronutrients such as vitamins and certain minerals.
• Avoiding directly poisonous (e.g. heavy metals) and carcinogenic (e.g. benzene) substances.
• Avoiding foods contaminated by human pathogens (e.g. E. coli, tapeworm eggs).

Dietary Guidelines for Americans[edit]

The Dietary Guidelines for American recommends three healthy patterns of diet, summarized in table below, for a 2000 kcal diet.^[5][6] Food group amounts per day, unless noted per week.

Food group/subgroup (units)	Healthy US patterns	Healthy Vegetarian patterns	Healthy Med-style patterns
Fruits (cup eq)	2	2	2.5
Vegetables (cup eq)	2.5	2.5	2.5
Dark green	1.5/wk	1.5/wk	1.5/wk
Red/orange	5.5/wk	5.5/wk	5.5/wk
Starchy	5/wk	5/wk	5/wk
Legumes	1.5/wk	3/wk	1.5/wk
Others	4/wk	4/wk	4/wk
Grains (oz eq)	6	6.5	6
Whole	3	3.5	3
Refined	3	3	3
Dairy (cup eq)	3	3	2
Protein Foods (oz eq)	5.5	3.5	6.5
Meat (red and processed)	12.5/wk	--	12.5/wk
Poultry	10.5/wk	--	10.5/wk
Seafood	8/wk	--	15/wk
Eggs	3/wk	3/wk	3/wk
Nuts/seeds	4/wk	7/wk	4/wk
Processed Soy (including tofu)	0.5/wk	8/wk	0.5/wk
Oils (grams)	27	27	27
Solid fats limit (grams)	18	21	17
Added sugars limit (grams)	30	36	29