It is a very interesting topic to be discussed. In our days we meet a lot of dangers for our health and we should avoid or combat them. I think here the most important part has the food we it and the water we drink. Our nutrition our body and us as a person, in a way. It is very important to eat healthy food as fruits vegetables and proteins. At the same time it is very good to keep yourself from consuming fats. There is a very good phrase “Eat less, exercise more”! Follow it always and you will be healthy.

What an interesting topic.
Nowadays it is a huge problem. People prefer eating some junk food. Yes, definitely it is fast and tasty, but no one thinks what is this food consist of. And if we look at ingredients attentively we will find a lot of ingredients that are not a food at all and tones of fat and sugar. And it leads to what we can observe on the streets: a lot, a lot of people with obesity. And the worst that obesity of children is extremely high.
But even if we want to eat healthy food it is a problem to find it.
Normal fruits and vegetables without nitrates and GMO, dairy products that are made of milk, real bread and so on. It is difficult to find and even if you find them, prices are twice bigger than average.

I don't think it's all that hard to find healthy food! I always try to shop at farmer's markets and local produce stores - they are often cheaper and far less chemically treated than the food in massive supermarkets. Moreover, it's much better for your local economy! The only concern you could have is that this kind of produce often looks "worse" than the expensive genetically modified products in big supermarkets - but I think that is a very good thing. Unless you're making a centrepiece. When you eat out, you can similarly try to eat at home-style local places rather than franchises. Again, it's a great way to support your local economy, and these places often have far stricter quality standards than big fast food chains. They source their ingredients from the aforementioned farmer's markets or from the farmers themselves, and, frankly, the food there is generally WAY better than the food at McDonald's, KFC or Burger King!

I think, especially in big cities, there is a trend towards healthy food and healthy living in general. Whenever I go to the gym, it's overflowing, and when I eat out at healthy-living sorts of restaurants, they're always extremely full. I also tend to shop at a supermarket that specializes in fruits, veggies and healthy food, and it's a huge franchise of shops with plenty of queues. I think we tend to say that it's "difficult" to be healthy, but it really isn't - there are tons of people who are making healthy life choices. It's up to YOU whether or not you eat out at McDonald's, it's definitely not a requirement (where I live, at least). And, yes, I can see how a lot of people end up eating less healthily than they'd like to, but I don't think it's all that new a thing. I think since the 50s, people have been eating frozen foods and eating out more than is advisable and the worst is they didn't know this was much of a problem!

Now, we do know, and I think most middle class city dwellers can easily avoid eating unhealthily. Another tip I have is go past the shops every day or two, rather than doing weekly shopping. That way you can pick up fresh food and never have to freeze anything, and you can also pick up great specials, in particular exotic veg and such. It's really not that hard, I don't think. Those who aren't middle class may have more of a challenge on their hands, due to lack of time, money and transport, but for the rest of us, there's really no excuse.

Also, @nicker - that's SO true! Exercise is important not just for keeping thin! There is plenty of clinical correlation between depression and lack of exercise, so I always advise everyone to keep active along with eating healthily. There's no need to go and be a bodybuilder, of course, but just take the stairs and walk every now and then, because this is great for your mental health (your body releases endorphins when you exercise, which makes you happy!) Then again, good food also releases endorphins, so not eating at all is silly. Eating "less" is good when you're cutting down portion size, not when you're cutting out various types of food. I think people often forget that, and end up getting carried away.

Healthy food is extremely important, but i would like to talk about food-combining. At age 25 I was practising of food combining for about a year, though, sometimes on holidays, for example, I ate something inappropriate (meat salads, etc.). But I couldn't eat meat and potatoes together it was absolutely tasteless. And I lost weight (I was plump), spots had passed and none appeared for that year! And in general I felt very cool! Then I gradually began to eat usually again, like everyone else, and imagine, for about six months, I was the same thin, I explained it by the fact that during a food-combining my metabolism had been improved and even incompatible products were better absorbed than before. So, now that I'm 30, I returned to this diet. For 10 days i have been on this diet. I feel great! During this time I kicked off 2 kilos.
And my dad has taught me that feeding type, he was very fat in 40 years, and he began to eat according to food combining principles (+ do not eat salt, and one day of the week was starving), and in 4 years he has lost more than 30 kilos. And he feels very well, he says that he feels as much energy as a young man.

wow, would you like to tell us more about the food combining diet? I have never heard of this. Are you saying that you managed to do the food combining diet because you no longer enjoyed eating "normally" (I'm referring to your mention of finding the standard meat and potatoes combination "tasteless"?). Did you train yourself to feel this way, or was it just naturally the way you were? I googled food combining and it sounds extremely interesting and potentially a really great lifestyle choice. My concern is that it seems very complex and I can't find the basics laid out anywhere. My main issue with most diets is that it's impossible to maintain as a lifestyle. Generally, unless you make dramatic lifestyle choices it's impossible to keep the weight off. However, from the very simple basics I've seen from my Food Combining Diet google search, it seems as though this IS a lifestyle, and, one site claims it's even possible to go out to eat and still keep up the diet. I think that is a massive problem with most diets - it's simply not feasible to follow them on a day to day basis. I also think a lot of diets are geared at more middle aged women or very young women. I'd love to hear some more about a diet that can be worked into your day-to-day life, and suits a wide age range.

I think it is very difficult to eat healthily and integrate healthy foods into your life. It's far too simple to just bail on a diet, and we live in a culture that seems to aim to make women hate themselves. We see skinny women on magazines, yet get told that "real women have curves". Obviously I'm not saying the media should start showing more skinny people - they already do that more than enough. But I think "normalizing" bigger women is equally bad. I know from personal experience, that it's all too easy to order fries instead of veg or a side order of onion rings, and rationalize it as "well I'm not exactly fat, am I? And real women have curves, remember!?" This is a terrible attitude. It's important to value not only quick weight loss, like you can achieve from a juice fast or something like that, or a lifestyle choice. It's far better to do lifestyle choices. Tracey, thank you for your excellent tips on places to source healthy food. However, what you haven't really told us about is a way to really integrate those sorts of decisions in my daily life. I don't struggle with the ideas of healthy eating and plenty of exercise, obviously those are great things to do. I struggle implementing them and sticking to resolutions I make.... That's precisely why I would love to use wow's food combining principles. They sounds as though they are possible to stick to, without too much fuss.

amy_g, thanks for your interest to my post.
Here my point of view.
Food combining diet is not just a diet, it's a whole philosophy. Try to hold on to a separate feed at least a couple of weeks and feel the difference!
The main thing here is to understand the logic of the body.
Proteins are digested in acid medium, carbohydrates are digested in alkaline. At the same time the body can not distinguish acid and alkali in the stomach, so if we simultaneously take the meat and potatoes, rice with fish or sausage sandwich, first digested for 2-4 hours carbohydrates (potatoes, rice, white bread) and protein (meat, fish) continues to lie in the stomach, waiting for their acidic environment, and from which there are unhealthy gases contaminated with bowel, constipation appear.
Digested of carbohydrate protein starts only in another 4-8 hours. Total overall maximum of lying, poor digestion and fermentation is 12 hours, this is the case, if a person does not overeaten. In general, it's a whole day! And we often have time for the same 12:00 distribute the stomach more stuff. And such an unhealthy process continues day after day. On digestion takes a lot of energy, and improper digestion many times more. Note when you overeat potatoes with meat, washed down with all this juice for some reason you start to want to sleep, and eating just rice - no ...
And I can add that is biggest problem is eating out. It is almost impossible to find something appropriate in restaurant and cafes. On other hand you can save money