Types of Balanced Diets
1. Vegetarian Diets:
- Lacto-ovo vegetarian: Includes dairy products and eggs, but no meat, poultry, or fish.
- Lacto-vegetarian: Includes dairy products, but no eggs, meat, poultry, or fish.
- Ovo-vegetarian: Includes eggs, but no dairy products, meat, poultry, or fish.
- Vegan (strict vegetarian): Excludes all animal products, including meat, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy products, and honey.
2. Plant-Based Diets:
- Flexitarian: Focuses primarily on plant-based foods but occasionally includes small amounts of meat or fish.
- Mediterranean diet: Emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and olive oil, with moderate amounts of fish and low amounts of red meat.
- DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension): Created to lower blood pressure, it includes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean protein, and low-fat dairy products, while limiting saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium.
3. Weight Loss Diets:
- Calorie-controlled diets: Reduce calorie intake through a variety of food choices.
- Intermittent fasting: Alternates periods of eating with periods of fasting.
- Ketogenic diet: Very low-carb, high-fat diet that forces the body to burn fat for energy.
4. Therapeutic Diets:
- Low-FODMAP diet: Eliminates certain carbohydrates that can cause digestive issues in people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).
- Low-sodium diet: Restricts salt intake to manage high blood pressure.
- Low-fat diet: Reduces the intake of fats, especially saturated and trans fats.
- Gluten-free diet: Excludes foods containing gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye, and barley, for people with celiac disease or gluten sensitivity.
5. Other Diets:
- Paleo diet: Based on the supposed diet of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, it emphasizes meat, fish, vegetables, fruits, and nuts, while excluding grains, legumes, and dairy products.
- Whole30: A short-term elimination diet that removes all processed foods, sugar, alcohol, grains, legumes, dairy, and soy for 30 days.
- Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD): Developed for people with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, it focuses on easily digestible carbohydrates and excludes certain foods.