English · Letter Writing
Letter to Your Friend About the Benefits of Eating Healthy Food
An informal letter on healthy eating, with the model answer and the layout.
Write this as friendly advice with a reason behind it: mention what prompted you to write, set out what healthy eating means in practice, and give the benefits you have seen yourself. Concrete food names and habits make the letter specific, which is where the content marks are.
The question: Write a letter to your friend about the benefits of eating healthy food.
The format
Start from your friend's situation
This advice only works if it fits the life the reader is actually living. Open by naming what they told you — hostel food, no time, breakfast skipped — and let everything that follows answer that.
- One sentence on their situation, one on why you are writing.
- Say you did the same thing yourself if you can; it removes the lecture.
Give habits, not nutrition
The middle paragraph should hold things a reader could do tomorrow: a change you made, what happened afterwards, what it cost. Vitamins and minerals belong in a science paragraph, not in a letter.
- Name actual foods — chirey, bananas, dal, seasonal fruit.
- Describe one change and its result.
- 🚨 Balanced diet as your only content says nothing.
Ask for something small
Close with the smallest possible suggestion — one thing in the room that is not fried. A modest close persuades better than a demand and gives the letter a natural ending.
Model answer
Model answer (about 170 words)
Nasirabad, Chattogram
5 September 2026
Dear Joy,
I hope your new hostel is treating you better than the last one. You mentioned in your last letter that you have been living mostly on singara and tea, and I am writing because I did the same thing in my first term and regretted it.
The change I made was small. I stopped buying anything fried before four o'clock and started keeping bananas and a packet of chirey in my room, so that when I was hungry between classes there was something there that was not from the canteen. Within a month I had stopped falling asleep over my books in the afternoon, which I had assumed was just how afternoons were. My mother would say this is obvious, and she would be right, but nobody tells you that the reason you cannot concentrate at three o'clock might be what you ate at eleven.
You do not need to give anything up entirely. Just have one thing in the room that is not fried. How are your classes going? Write soon.
Yours ever,
Rifat
What earns and loses marks
- Name real foods. Bananas and a packet of chirey put the reader in the room; “nutritious food containing vitamins and minerals” puts them in a textbook.
- Length is not the point — a letter of about 150 words that does the four parts properly beats a rambling 300-word one.
- Keep the tense consistent: a letter about something that happened stays in the past, a letter about a plan stays in the future.
- Ask at least one question of your friend, so the letter reads as one half of a conversation rather than a speech.
- Leave a clear blank line between paragraphs — layout marks are given for what the examiner can see at a glance.
Mistakes to avoid
- ✗ Healthy food is essential for our body. It contains vitamins, minerals and proteins. ✓ I stopped buying anything fried before four o’clock. — advice you can act on beats a definition
Frequently Asked Questions
No, and a letter that tries to teach nutrition usually goes wrong. The question is about advising a friend, so what is being marked is whether you can give practical, well-organised advice in the right register. One accurate general statement plus concrete habits is enough.
Yes, and you should. Naming chirey, muri, seasonal fruit or dal makes the advice usable and the letter specific, which is where the content marks are. Generic references to “fast food” and “junk food” are much weaker.
A paragraph explains a topic to nobody in particular; this letter persuades one person you know. That means referring to something they told you, giving advice sized to their situation, and closing with a question. Turning a paragraph into a letter by adding “Dear friend” at the top loses most of the letter marks.
Keep going
Model answers, formats and grammar rules for every SSC and HSC writing question.






















