ABSTRACT
There is no such thing as a perfect or complete food, which means that there is no single food that provides sufficient of all of the essential nutrients to keep us healthy or which we would be happy to eat on its own to the exclusion of all other foods. It follows that we need to eat a variety of foods to satisfy and nourish us; also, because different foods have widely differing nutritional contents we need to select the foods we eat in such a way that they provide us with a satisfactory or healthy diet as well as providing interest to the senses. The information given in other parts of this book will not be of great practical value unless it can be applied so as to establish the nature of satisfactory patterns of eating. A discussion of diet therefore forms a practical and logical conclusion to the principles of nutrition discussed earlier.
