That was not the question. Your question was: "Does a balanced diet include fast food?"
The answer to that is simple: No.
A balanced diet is a healthy mix of essential nutrients. Highly processes foods rich in fat or sugar are not part of it [1]. Most advisories merely acknowledge that a large part of the population doesn't want to stop eating this stuff completely. But the real goal should always be zero.
Your link doesnt have any mention of processed food. Also it starts with that it's not to goal to adhere 100% and its not needed. As such it does contain fastfood and ultra processed food. As being part of healthy diet.
Thus leading to my initial point, a balanced and healthy diet are too ambiguous.
> The Eatwell Guide shows how much of what we eat overall should come from each food group to achieve a healthy, balanced diet.
> You do not need to achieve this balance with every meal, but try to get the balance right over a day or even a week.
>Your link doesnt have any mention of processed food.
It does if you know what you are looking for. "Highly processed" is not strictly well defined, but commonly understood as foods with large amounts of added salt, fat and sugar. That's exactly the category of food they talk about in the article as unnecessary for our diet and which should be consumed as little as possible.
The answer to that is simple: No.
A balanced diet is a healthy mix of essential nutrients. Highly processes foods rich in fat or sugar are not part of it [1]. Most advisories merely acknowledge that a large part of the population doesn't want to stop eating this stuff completely. But the real goal should always be zero.
[1] https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-guidelines-and-fo...