If you want to look and feel your best, a healthy diet is key. Eating right may also help reduce your risk for such serious disorders as diabetes, osteoporosis, and heart disease. But following a balanced diet can be challenging when you're not exactly sure what foods have which nutrients, and how much of a particular food you should be consuming. Once you acquire some basic nutritional know-how, though, you'll find that eating well is not only possible, but delicious and easy.

Here's a look at nutrition by the numbers:

1,800 to 2,200: Daily number of calories recommended by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics for a moderately active woman.

2: Number of daily cups of fruit recommended for women.

400: Number of micrograms of folic acid recommended for women of childbearing age.

3: Recommended daily number of servings for women of low-fat or fat-free dairy products such as low-fat or fat-free milk, yogurt and cheese.

21: Grams of protein in a three-ounce piece of meat.

46: Grams of protein needed daily by an adult female.

56: Grams of protein needed daily by an adult male.

300: Maximum amount, in milligrams, of cholesterol you should eat in a day, according to the American Heart Association.

1,500: Recommended amount of sodium, in milligrams, a healthy adult should consume each day, according to the American Heart Association

20: Number of amino acids that join together to make all types of protein; those that cannot be made by the body are called essential amino acids.

75: Percentage of salt in the American diet that's consumed from eating processed foods.

1,300: Number of milligrams of calcium needed daily by a 14- to 18-year-old girl.

99: Percentage of the body's calcium that is stored in the bones and teeth.

4: Number of states where fewer than 10 percent of the grownups eat fruit two or more times a day and vegetables three or more times a day.

1,200: Recommended daily milligrams of calcium for women 51 and older, according to the National Institutes of Health.

 

 

Sources:

Healthy Eating for Women. Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics
http://www.eatright.org/Public/content.aspx?id=6805

Protein. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
http://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/everyone/basics/protein.html

Vitamins and Minerals. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
http://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/everyone/basics/vitamins/index.html

Dietary Supplement Fact Sheet: Calcium. Office of Dietary Supplements
http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/calcium-HealthProfessional/