The Diet

The Diet

Adiet is the set of food substances that make up the nutritional behavior of living beings. The concept comes from the Greek diaita , which means "way of life" . Diet, therefore, is a habit and a way of life. Sometimes, the term is usually used to refer to special regimens to lose weight or to fight certain diseases , although these cases represent changes in the diet and not the diet itself.

According to the diet that follows, living beings can be classified in different ways: carnivores (eat meat), detritivores (they eat dead organic substances), herbivores (eat plants and fruits), insectivores (insects), omnivores (their system can digest meats and vegetables) or cannibals (eat members of the same species), among others. The human being is omnivorous by nature, although for ideological or religious reasons many choose to be vegetarians (they abstain from meat and fish).

The human consumption is not determined only by biological issues, but is influenced by factors social , economic and cultural . Many times the diet is conditioned by the availability of food that depends on weather conditions and the geographical location of each region.

Nor can forget the personal factors that determine a diet, such as taste, the influence of advertising of certain food products, aesthetic preferences and other issues.

The ease of obtaining certain foods, weather conditions and social customs make each country and region have its own diet. Argentina , for example, has one of the highest beef consumption rates in the world. United States , however, is characterized by eating junk food (English junk food ), ie foods with little nutritional value and high levels of fats and sugars, like hamburgers. This diet has caused an epidemic of obesity in the American population.