Vasudevan Sankaran^1,, Vasudevan Damodaran²

Since the initial scientific recommendations of 1970s on healthy dietary fat consumption, no population groups could really practice them with suitable menu formulations, till today. This is because of reasons like, difficulty in translating the recommendations into menu formulation with oils of unique natural compositions and also for the custom of using single edible oil for cooking. It was in this context of, constituting menu for balanced diets with fat in healthy format (e.g., different fats in equal amounts, with the polyunsaturated fatty acids in healthy ratios, like 4:1), continuing hypothetical, the authors attempted to derive a new menu table for a balanced diet with formatted fat using some of the routine food items of India. The approach was to construct a sample menu in tabular form for a balanced diet of 2000 Calories with fats in balance and a healthy ‘omega ratio’ (the omega -6 / omega-3 type fatty acid ratio). The methodology of tabulation was, arranging the food items in columns and their nutritive data in rows, till the development of the menu presented. Thus, the current work shows that it is possible to formulate a menu table for a balanced diet, with mathematically derived predictions on its nutritive qualities and format of fat. Though a predictive model, its methodology and format form essential grid molds for preparing metabolically targeted model diets for conditions of health and diseases, in the easiest way, with least wastage of resources. The tables of the workup can be used as tools or scales too, for the nutritive assessment of dietetic combinations, before and after preparing recipes. The contextual significance of the new workup is its highly predictable acceptability due to the familiar composition and cheaper budgetary load to the Indian population (i.e., traditional food items in near traditional quantities, on minimum expense).

Balanced diet, 2000 Calories, dietary fat consumption, omega ratio, formatted fat