Since you are what you eat, as the common phrase goes, it should be no surprise that what you eat can keep you healthy, and even fight against serious health issues.

Simple changes to your diet can help prevent heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and cancer. If you have any of these conditions, good sound nutrition can help you.

Even better news is that it’s never too late to start eating right and improving your health.

Many people believe that dietary changes made later in life are of little benefit. This is NOT true!

In fact, changing your diet even at mid-life or even later CAN still be a powerful weapon against several leading chronic diseases, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and certain forms of cancer.

The amount and types of food you eat may determine whether and when you develop a disease that reduces your quality of life (such as osteoporosis) or a life-threatening disorder (such as cancer or coronary heart disease).

In several surveys of nutrition habits, people cite many obstacles to good nutrition: time constraints, the easy availability of packaged and processed foods, the perception that they will have to give up their favorite foods, and confusion over conflicting information on nutrition.

That is not surprising—every day we’re bombarded with information on what we should or shouldn’t eat, and much of the information can be puzzling, inaccurate, or even contradictory.

In this series of articles, we will try to keep the nutrition advice as clear and simple as possible so you can take action NOW to prevent disease.

Continued in Diet and Disease Prevention Part 2

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About the Author:

This series on diet and disease prevention is authored by Joan Mullally, head of online development for Johns Hopkins Consumer Health Publications.  She is a frequent contributor to several popular health sites and blogs, including Nutrition Goddess, Weight Loss Goddess, and Healthful Goddess.