Healthy eating

Reviewed 12/8/2025

Overview

Eating a healthy, balanced diet is an important part of maintaining good health. The Eat Well Guide shows that to have a healthy, balanced diet, people should try to:

• eat at least 5 portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables every day
• base meals on higher fibre starchy foods like potatoes, bread, rice or pasta
• have some dairy or dairy alternatives (such as soya drinks)
• eat some beans, pulses, fish, eggs, meat and other protein
• choose unsaturated oils and spreads, and eat them in small amounts; and drink plenty of fluids.

Fruit and veg consumption is often used as a quick indicator of the number of people who eat a broader healthy diet.

The Bolton picture

• Fingertips indicators - from OHID
• FEAT tool - Food environment assessment tool (Feat) enables detailed exploration of the geography of food retail access across England, Scotland and Wales. It is designed around the needs of professionals in public health, environmental health and planning roles, locally and nationally. Use it to map, measure and monitor access to food outlets at a neighbourhood level, including changes over time.
• Fast food outlets: density by local authority in England (2018) - from Public Health England

Further useful links

• Eating out/ fast food
  • How eating out contributes to our diets - from NESTA
  • Relationship between the concentration of fast food outlets and health - from the Health Foundation
  • Evaluation of planning policy to regulate takeaway food outlets in England - literature review by the MRC Epidemiology unit
• Eat Well - information and guidance about eating a healthy, balanced diet - from the NHS
• The eat well guide - shows how much of what we eat overall should come from each food group to achieve a healthy, balanced diet - from the NHS
• Diet, nutrition and obesity from NICE - All NICE products on diet, nutrition and obesity. Includes any guidance, advice and quality standards
• Action on Salt - a group of specialists concerned with salt and its effects on health
• National diet and nutrition survey reports - from OHID. The National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS) is a continuous, cross-sectional survey. It is designed to collect detailed, quantitative information on the food consumption, nutrient intake and nutritional status of the population living in private households in the UK