JPA 2.1 has introduced the Entity Graph feature as a more sophisticated method of dealing with performance loading.
It allows defining a template by grouping the related persistence fields which we want to retrieve and lets us choose the graph type at runtime.
The main goal of the JPA Entity Graph is then to improve the runtime performance when loading the entity's related associations and basic fields.
Briefly put, the JPA provider loads all the graph in one select query and then avoids fetching association with more SELECT queries. This is considered a good approach for improving application performance.