I bailed on pasta, processed meats, packaged premade “meals”, and stopped drinking soda when New Coke was released in 1985. I eat meats (chicken, pork and fish) and greens… Mostly greens. Cook at home and generally avoid all the garbage on the store shelves in bright;y colored boxes. Shop the edges of the grocery store - that is where all the fresh food is.

nobody can seem to agree on what a ‘healthy diet’

You’re wrong but it’s OK. Eat vegetables. " Things that are green " if it helps you. Not too much meat, not too much bread and pasta. That’s it, it’s easy. 2 or 3 times a day, not more. Stop eating sugar.

People do agree.

Almost everyone who studies this stuff professional agrees that the following are bad, and should be limited:

• High sugar, low fiber foods: soft drinks, candy, donuts, cake, ice cream, most other classic desserts.
• Oily/fatty processed foods: chips, certain crackers, shelf stable baked goods like cookies, donuts, wrapped cakes, really greasy pizza.
• Trans fats
• Alcohol

Almost everyone agrees that the following are good, and should be maximized:

• Leafy vegetables
• Colorful vegetables
• Beans, peas, chickpeas, lentils, other cooked legumes/pulses
• Fermented/pickled vegetables, especially through lactic acid fermentation

It’s not universal, but it’s a pretty broad consensus that the Mediterranean diet is good for you, which includes a lot of:

• Fish, especially fatty fish low on the food chain, like sardines and anchovies
• Other seafood, especially those low on the food chain
• Whole fruit
• Nuts
• Extra virgin olive oil in reasonable quantities

It’s also not universal, but the broad consensus is that the following are bad for you when eaten in excess:

• Cured meats like sausage/ham
• Fried foods
• Red meat
• Low fiber white starches (white bread, white pasta, white rice)

For me personally, I eat a lot. I want to eat a lot. I could win amateur eating contests in my youth, and even today, left to my own devices, I have no trouble eating 2000 calories in a single meal, 5000 calories in a single day. So I need to manage my hunger, and I’ve found that for me, fiber and protein promote satiety, so I eat a lot of legumes: beans, lentils, green beans, peas, peanuts. These are basically my staple food, and I drink a lot of water, and eat a lot of watery foods (fruit, soup, etc.).

I mostly avoid processed sugar (no sugary drinks or candy or desserts). I leave fried foods, which I love, for special occasions. I have seriously reduced my consumption of red meat, almost to zero, mainly out of social responsibility, but also with an eye towards health.

I avoid bringing unhealthy foods into my house. It’s a lot easier to avoid eating them when I would have to go out of my way to order it.

I’m also working out all the time. Not just to buy me a calorie budget for eating, but also because knowing I need to go to the gym later helps control my portions and choices earlier in the day. Nothing worse than trying to squat 330+ lbs (150+ kg) with a huge portion of greasy fried chicken sitting in your stomach.

doesn’t have to be complicated, dont eat much processed food, eat lots of vegetables, cook for yourself … or my preferred choice, have a chef for a gf who is big into garden to plate i.e from her own garden and/or other locals she swaps with.

Mostly by cooking a lot of your own meals, then you know what goes in them. My only cooking stuff that freezes well does limit me somewhat though, trying to cook more day by day in the winter at least.

Eat a variety of plant based whole foods, limit processed foods, avoid ultra processed foods.

NutritionFacts.Org is a non profit run by Michael Greger, M.D. FACLM, a real licensed doctor. It has a ton of great information, breaking down scientific studies and examines how diets affect the population. There’s a reason why 9 out of the top 15 causes of death are dietary related, and there’s a reason why people who exclusively eat planet based have much better health outcomes, in terms of heart disease, cancer, etc.

Healthy to me is lots of salads with different greens and vegetables, small amounts of fish or chicken, and fresh green tea.

what everyone said but i would add watch macros to find balance. swapping out fat for more fibre and protien goes a long way especially with reducing visceral fat which can have a long impact on things like reducing stroke and organ diseases.

keep sugar down around 25g. the average person gets up to like 5 times that amount a day or even in one meal. and any eat sugar you do eat, eat it with fibre so its not released into your system all at once.

Try to get 30 grams of fiber a day. Limit processed foods. Limit saturated fats.

I eat a lot of salads with avocado. Oatmeal with dried fruit. Beans and rice.

I had high cholesterol and was overweight. Changing my diet fixed these issues and made me feel better.

Wherever possible, stick to the perimeter of the grocery store. Fresh vegetables and fruit, eggs, dried fruits, nuts and oats, frozen vegetables, unprocessed meats if that’s your thing. The closer you get to the middle of the grocery store, the more processed and less healthy the items are. The candy and chips are usually right in the middle of the store. And for God’s sake don’t eat or drink anything from the shampoo and laundry aisle.

Healthy mostly means you get all the stuff you need and not too much of anything.
So what you need and what you need to avoid depends on your body and environment.

You can try to keep book of all the essential vitamins and minerals in your diet.
Or you research what the body needs and what the commonly acknowledged limits are. Then you can just supplement them in reasonable quantities to make it highly unlikely to be deficient or overdosed in any of them. And that’s what I do.
always be careful to not overdose Potassium, Iodine, or Calcium. Don’t supplement vitamin A. Get β-carotene instead as the body makes vitamin A from it as needed.

Chances are, you get enough protein because it’s really hard not to in an industrialized nation.
But it might be worth to look at the different amino acids and the overall protein intake if you don’t like meat, tofu, or highly processed meat replacements.

If you really don’t eat any fish or mussels regularly, you might want to supplement the omega 3 fatty acids.

The digestive tract needs some insoluble fibers in the diet to not get constipation. But it doesn’t need them every day and not in huge quantities. So if you have the occasional random vegetables in your diet, that should be covered. It’s trivial to know when it’s not enough because avoiding constipation is really all the insoluble fibers do.

What’s left is carbohydrates and fats. Any will do. And if you are in an industrialized nation, you likely got them covered.
But some sugars are really spiking insulin production, stress the system, and can lead to sugar highs and lows. So try not too eat too many sweets or soft drinks in one session.

The last thing is calories/energy. If you got too few, you need to eat more carbohydrates and fats. If you got too many, you need to eat less carbohydrates and fats. But as is blatantly obvious by now that isn’t really actionable advice.
I guess, for undersupply, the solution could be to fatten up the diet and sweating stuff with with lactose if not lactose intolerant. But anyone having this problem in an industrialized nation probably also has more serious problems that cause it.
For oversupply there is no real solution for most people apart maybe Ozempic because constantly fighting one’s own appetite is basically impossible for normal people. Just don’t start smoking to loose weight. It probably works, but it comes with its own problems.

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Calorie and macro-nutrient tracking/counting.

Healthier choices follow as a normal consequence. Once you’ve got the proof in front of you of the nutritional value of food and what it’s doing for you, it’s really a lot harder to make unhealthy choices again… It’s easier to get fruit and veg into your diet, veg in particular is so filling for how low in calories it is it’s basically “free”.

I’m not on any sort of restrictive diet– low carb, low fat, no sugar, keto, vegan, or anything else– except that I stick to my recommended energy intake. I didn’t intentionally cut junk food out, there’s nothing I’m forbidden from eating, but I ended up eating far less junk food incidentally as a result.

It absolutely is not for everyone– some people find calorie counting stressful or a time drain, and it does of course have an association with disorders– but eating only your recommended energy intake for your age, height, gender, and activity level is a great starting point.

If you’ve stuck to your calorie budget but you’re still physically hungry late at night… Well, your diet needs rebalancing.

A very simple, though hardly practical rule to follow perfectly is: “Avoid things with ingredient lists.”

Michael Pollan as mentioned elsewhere “eat food, mostly plants, not too much.”

“Avoid the centre of the grocery store” assuming a North American layout (which has regional variations) - the point being that the prepared foods are in the middle, the outside edges are butcher, dairy, and produce.

Some asshole once said, “Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.” This is also good advice, despite the source.

Given than nobody can seem to agree on what a ‘healthy diet’ looks like

as a side quest I recommend working on how to distinguish credible sources of information from not