A balanced diet is the key to a healthy life

Although a balanced diet is important, there are other factors which contribute to a healthy life. People in some cultures do not eat a balanced diet, but use limited food sources are healthy. In addition, lack of stress could well be as important as diet.

One culture-related reason for this theory is environmental or climatic conditions. The Inuit, in the Artic circle, live in harsh surroundings and their major source of food for many months of the year is fish. Nutritionists in industrialized countries would not consider their diet balanced or even healthy, yet Inuit people have flourished on food from the sea for centuries. Another cultural reason is religion. Many Hindus are vegetarian. Again, many dietitians claim that vegetarianism is unbalanced because humans need protein,especially from animals. Hindus, however, seem to be quite healthy and suffer no ill effects from the lack of animal protein.

The major reason for disagreeing with the balanced diet argument, however, is to do with stress. Even though people in the past did not always have a balanced diet, sometimes existing only on potatoes and bread, they lived healthy lives because there was little or no stress of the kind that afflicts urban residents today. Secondly, there is a large percentage of people in developed and developing societies who do their jobs, then relax in front of the television, quite often eating only junk food, but seem healthy enough. They may be spared illness and disease by their relatively stress-free lives.

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