Getting involved in food preparation allows us to be more aware of our diet. 

A good diet has many benefits for the body. The food we choose every day has an impact on the energy we need to carry out daily activities and on our physical and mental well-being. Even several of the most well-known chronic diseases, such as obesity or cancer, are often related to nutrition.

However, starting the journey towards healthy and conscious eating is not easy. Amidst the endless dietary advice found on the Internet and the myths we constantly hear from acquaintances, we can find data that lead us to harm our body and move further and further away from the main objective: learning to eat.

To do this, it is important to define basic concepts that we hear when addressing this topic, but that may not be as obvious as they seem. With this clarity, you can begin an exploration that allows you to achieve realistic goals that translate into well-being. Below are the most important ones:

• Healthy nutrition: The main concept is that it is everything we consume during the day and that it must include a variety of food groups. It also includes voluntary acts ranging from the choice to the preparation and consumption of food.

• Food: They are all the substances that we ingest and that perform a function in the body.

• Appetite: conscious state characterized by the desire for food produced by the sight, smell, taste or conceived idea that we have of food. This desire is suppressed after eating.

• Food groups: It is a classification that allows us to group foods according to their nutrients and functions. We find them in nature. A healthy diet requires that we include as many of these groups as possible.

• Diet: Contrary to what many believe, it is all the foods we consume daily.

• Nutrition: It is an autonomous process in which food enters the body, is digested, absorbed and excreted.

• Metabolism: sum of all the physical and chemical changes of the nutrients absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract that take place in the cells of the body, through which the oxidation of said food substances occurs in order to provide energy for the maintenance of life.

• Macronutrient: They are substances such as carbohydrates, proteins and fats. The body obtains energy from them to perform physiological functions and physical activity.

• Micronutrient: They are substances that the body requires in small quantities, but which are necessary to maintain good health. This group includes vitamins and minerals.

Having clarity about these general definitions is only the first step. This and other data become tools that allow us to make better decisions when it comes to eating and doing so in a healthy and conscious way. With this, we will get closer to the balance and well-being that, ultimately, are in our hands.