After analysing more than 1000 raw foods, researchers ranked the ingredients
that provide the best balance of your daily nutritional requirements – and
they found a few surprises.
As many countries urge populations to stay at home, many of us are paying
more attention to our diets and how the food we eat can support our health.
To help sort out the fact from the fiction, BBC Future is updating some of
our most popular nutrition stories from our archive.
Our colleagues at BBC Good Food are focusing on practical solutions for
ingredient swaps, nutritious storecupboard recipes and all aspects of cooking
and eating during lockdown.
Imagine the ideal food. One that contains all the nutrients necessary to meet,
but not exceed, our daily nutrient demands. If such a food existed, consuming it,
without eating any other, would provide the optimal nutritional balance for our body.
Such a food does not exist. But we can do the next best thing.
The key is to eat a balance of highly nutritional foods, that when consumed together,
do not contain too much of any one nutrient, to avoid exceeding daily recommended amounts.
That's especially important when we are thrown out of our usual routines,
as so many have been with enforced isolation during the current pandemic.
Scientists studied more than 1000 foods, assigning each a nutritional score.
The higher the score, the more likely each food would meet, but not exceed your daily
nutritional needs, when eaten in combination with others.