Healthy eating

Context

Healthy eating is all about the pleasure of eating a wide variety of foods and giving priority to foods of high nutritional value, such as fruits and vegetables, whole grain products, low-fat dairy products, lean meats and poultry and meat substitutes like fish, legumes and tofu. In fact, healthy eating includes everything we eat, day in day out. It's all a matter of how often and how much!

Healthy eating can help reduce the risk of obesity, type II diabetes, heart disease certain types of cancer and osteoporosis while promoting a better level of overall health and well-being.

Source : Direction de santé publique de Montréal

Target population

For practical advice on healthy eating for specific age groups, see the following pages:

• Pregnant women
• Infants
• Children
• Teenagers
• Adults

 Practical advice

Whom should you contact to get help? 

To find out what nutritional services are offered in your neighbourhood, contact the dietician-nutritionist at your local community service centre (CLSC). 

To meet with a dietician-nutritionist at a private clinic and get nutritional advice, contact the Ordre professionnel des diététistes du Québec (OPDQ). 

For more information on the services offered by Health Education Centres (CES), see the list of CSSS. 

Where can you find additional, credible information?

• Health Canada, Eating Well with Canada's Food Guide
• 5/30 Health and Wellness Challenge

Advice on hygiene and food safety

• Canadian Food Inspection Agency
• Ministère de l'agriculture, des pêcheries et de l'alimentation du Québec (MAPAQ) 

Tips on affordable ways to eat healthy food

• Extenso, a Web-based preventive nutrition tool from the Université de Montréal's Centre universitaire de nutrition préventive NUTRIUM (in french only)

Information on food produced in Québec

• Ministère de l'Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l'Alimentation du Québec (MAPAQ)