Nutrition as it applies to our daily lives means that we take in what we need to maintain our body's healthy state. Nutrition has become an important word thanks to the involvement of the USDA in our daily food requirements, and the FDA's involvement in determining what is and is not dangerous for us to consume.
What about eating habits? What about vitamins? What role does our daily intake play in our health? More than you have been lead to believe or understand. The body's ability to remain well under anything other than ideal conditions is a direct result of the nutrition received on a daily basis. The mind's ability to remain well is, again, a direct result of our nutritional intake. For instance, the human brain doesn't develop well without the necessary input of protein in our daily diet. No protein, no intelligence.
Nutrition refers to the nurturing of our body, in our ability to keep it healthy and functioning as it is supposed to do. Our ability to provide the body with all the necessary food, vitamins, and minerals so that we continue to thrive in our daily life processes.
How do we determine that we are providing the essential nutritional needs? That knowledge comes by educating ourselves about what our individual needs are, the needs of our family, and then taking that knowledge and applying it to the foods we buy, that we prepare, and that our families consume.
Health is taught as a science course, and addresses matters of personal hygiene, diseases, and the broad spectrum of health as it applies to the masses. No individual attention is given to how to attain optimal health via our eating habits. It's funny that we skip the most important, fundamental building block to good health: our nutritional and caloric consumption in our food. I personally believe we should have the field of nutrition and physical activity married into something combined to provide every person that enters the school system with a personal knowledge of their bodies' needs, caloric, and nutritional, so that they complete their education with mental and physical competencies, as well as analytical and mathematical competence.
Nutrition is a concept that should be as important to our educational process as our ability to count. The ability to recognize our nutritional requirements, find the foods we need to fulfill those requirements, and differentiate between healthy food consumption and "unhealthy" eating habits is not an option. Not for a healthy, happy, long, and quality life
What we should absorb as we travel along life's daily path is a way to incorporate good nutrition into our lifestyle. There is generally just as much room for good as there is bad, it just so happens that bad nutritional habits hold more appeal.
Bad nutrition receives more advertising dollars than healthy nutritional options, and is often more visible. But that doesn't mean it's any easier, more convenient, or cheaper. Habits, generally take about two weeks to make the switch from conscious action to unconscious thought. Two weeks is not long, it's not long at all for decisions that will affect you for the rest of your life. It's also not long for the potential reward that comes from setting an example your children can follow, and you can be proud for them to follow. You teach them daily about the good habits you want them to develop, and then you demonstrate a bad one in your nutrition choices. C'mon, mom and dad, let's practice what we preach.
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Nutrition as it applies to our daily lives means that we take in what we need to maintain our body's healthy state. Nutrition has become an important word thanks to the involvement of the USDA in our daily food requirements, and the FDA's involvement in determining what is and is not dangerous for us to consume.
But what is our responsibility in the nutrition game? Do we understand what our nutritional requirements are, how to fulfill those requirements, and how to look for real nutritional value in our foods? I'm not sure that nutrition has been successfully addressed in its own right. We hear nutrition in relation to our vitamin intake, our fortified cereals and milk, and in the context that we need "nutritional value" from our food choices. But what really is nutrition when applied to our daily bodily functions?
Nutrition refers to the nurturing of our body, in our ability to keep it healthy and functioning as it is supposed to do. Our ability to provide the body with all the necessary food, vitamins, and minerals so that we continue to thrive in our daily life processes.
How do we determine that we are providing the essential nutritional needs? That knowledge comes by educating ourselves about what our individual needs are, the needs of our family, and then taking that knowledge and applying it to the foods we buy, that we prepare, and that our families consume.
Quite often, our vitamin and mineral needs outweigh our caloric needs. In those instances, we turn to manufactured vitamins and minerals to fill the gap. This is a part of our nutritional needs, also.
Complete knowledge of the nutrition spectrum takes some time to absorb. The body contains so many different elements, some in large quantity, and some in only trace amounts. How do you know what you, much less everyone else you might be responsible for, needs? As of today, there is no good way to determine each individual's specific needs. What we have is an average consumption based on your gender, your age, and weight. This is like saying, ok, one size fits all.
Nutrition is one of the most complex areas to gain useful knowledge about, because there are so many components, and because each person has their own individual needs. Women needs differ from those of men, and older women's needs differ from those of a young girl. As we age, our needs constantly change; therefore continual education about nutrition is a fact of life.
The nutritional needs of a cardiac patient are different than those of a healthy, middle-aged hiker. Can you see the complexity of the situation now? What we really need is to develop a scale that determines the nutritional needs of our bodies on a cellular level, so that as we age, as our physical condition changes, or our health changes, we can recalculate our needs, based on cellular changes and content in our body. Individuality is the key to understanding each person's nutritional needs, and then working to educate ourselves is the key to fulfilling those nutritional needs.
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The dictionary defines a calorie as a unit of heat energy. It is also defined as a unit of energy-producing potential equal to the amount of heat that is contained in food and released upon oxidation by the body. When making the distinction between a chemistry calorie and a food calorie, we must clarify the difference in quantity. The food calorie is equal to 1000 chemistry calories.
Now that we have addressed the mathematical and chemical analogy of calorie, let's look at what the calorie means to you, a food consumer. A calorie is the way we measure the energy potential of food. It is also the way we determine if we are overeating and consuming too much potential energy for our bodily functions. If we consume too much energy, our body stores it for future use. This makes us become obese. If we don't consume enough for our daily use, we can become anorexic.
In order to maintain optimal health, and our optimal body weight, a calorie requirement that is specific to our unique needs must be obtained. Once we are aware of what our calorie needs are we can tailor our diet to fit those needs
One of the most difficult situations to overcome is that of the need to diet. Once we have determined our calorie requirements, if we also need to diet and lose body weight, we are faced with cutting our calorie intake. Having been slightly overweight most of my adult life, I can tell you this is a difficult struggle. Combining the need for fewer calories, and the increased need for exercise, is often a daunting task for an individual. It is also a very difficult one to maintain.
There are products on the market today that make calorie counting easier than ever, and there are diet plans that make substitution of diet foods easier than ever. What they have not invented is a way to boost will power, which would make the struggle easier than ever. Those products are worn on some part of the body, and tabulate for us what our calorie expenditure is during the day. What we need is to take this one step further, and have an instrument that can also calculate our calorie intake and leave us with our available consumption balance. If you overeat, there could be a warning sound from the calorie counter. If the sound is quite embarrassing, you wouldn't have to worry about overeaters!
The road to good health is not an easy one for most. It should be one of the easiest things we have to do, since good health is something we should have spent a lifetime incorporating into our daily routine. But what we find most of the time, is that we make very little time for our health, and even less time for our understanding of the calorie and its effect upon our body. When we do take notice of the bugle around the waist, we want the quick fix for the problem, diet and exercise are to difficult and take too long. But they are the only alternatives that work.
So as you go about your day, think about the calorie. Think about what it means to your waistline and your health. Proper understanding, consumption levels, and a maintenance plan make for a healthy, high quality life.
I know we talk a lot about the effect of our eating habits on our general health, what we don't mention is the effect television and advertising have had on our eating habits. Until the advent of television, people simply ate what was available in their locality for them to eat. Thanks to television, the demand for a product meant that the grocery had to find the product and have it delivered to his location. But it happened, and continues to happen today.
All day long, adults and children are bombarded with television, radio, newspaper, and billboard advertising that will affect what they choose to eat, when they choose to eat, and how they choose to eat. Good eating habits are difficult to find, and even harder to instill in our children.
Thanks to Saturday morning cartoons, and all those cereal commercials, we have a whole generation of children who grew up on cereal and pop-tarts. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't think it's bad to eat those things, but when you restrict your diet to only those kinds of food, it is bad.
The effect of advertising on our eating habits is such big business, that companies spend billions on advertising budgets each year. If you are one of the lucky ones to hit upon the "catchy" idea of the month, you are quite a bit richer at the end of the journey. This is a concept many people don't seem to understand. Those companies aren't doing that advertising because they're concerned with your health. They're doing it because they're concerned with making a profit.
Consider the Super bowl games every year. Companies spend billions of dollars for the opportunity to advertise with a 30-second spot. But you know what they stand to gain? Increased sales for an entire year, because the vast majority of America watches the Super bowl; they also see the commercials. It's a huge game of hit or miss, but if you hit, you're a major winner.
The cereal industry is one of the major players in the advertising game. When it comes to influencing our eating habits, everyone should take lessons from Kellogg. Another big player used to be Campbell's soups. Today we have so many vying for the piece of the food pie, that it's hard to name a super advertiser.
When do the advertisers attempt to reach the consumer? The prime time for advertising is during what's called prime time viewing. From around 6pm until 10pm each and every night, most of America is in front of their television set, and tuned into the latest hit TV show. They're also tuned into the latest advertising influences.
Don't misunderstand, it's not just the food advertisers that do this to consumers, every car manufacturer in the world uses the same advertising principles to sell huge volumes of cars. Beer companies the world over have advertised and made millions appealing to the consumers sense of "cool".
Who suffers? The consumers who are not educated with the knowledge of the real facts that affect their health are the real losers in the advertising game. Most of the time, it is our young audience that pays the highest price, for they are the least knowledgeable. This is a huge contributor to the obesity issues faces our young people today.
It's Thursday afternoon, you have thirty minutes to get from work, go by the house and pickup Heath, Jamie's already at basketball practice, oh, and what about dinner? Does this scenario seem familiar? If you're a working Mom, I can promise that it is a familiar scene.
So how do you make healthy food choices, when you only have fifteen minutes to prepare your meals? Well, the first thing you should realize is that quite often, healthy choices do not necessarily equate to two hour meals. You can make healthy food choices that are as quick to prepare or pickup as the unhealthy ones.
Quite often, metropolitan areas provide a restaurant guide in their phone book, and you have access to full page menus that explain what a restaurant or drive thru offers. Today, many of those options now include healthy alternatives as well as the usual fare.
Places like McDonald's and Hardee's now offer carbohydrate conscious consumers other options for their hamburger choices. You can order with or without the bun. Fruit and yogurt choices now appear on menus, as well as fresh salads.
Many restaurants offer salad choices as side orders or as a full meal. Fresh vegetables served with chopped chicken, ham, roast beef, or bacon, are often more appealing than the standard menu items. For summer consumption, salads often seam more pleasing because they're lighter on our digestive system.
Local flavor restaurants are often serving the food that is also in season for local farmers. Quite often, there are really healthy choices that are affordable, and taste really good. Sometimes you will have restaurants that create their own recipes for healthy options, giving the consumer a completely new choice, and stimulating new clients simultaneously.
Suppose you aren't in the mood for take out, and you'd like to prepare your family's meal. That just increases your options as far as making healthy choices. A visit to your local grocery store or supermarket will reveal more healthy choices than you ever thought possible. The fresh fruits and vegetables offered today are more varied than even a few short years ago, thanks to improved preservatives and transportation of the goods. All kinds of cuisine can now be prepared, very quickly thanks to the choices of fresh, not frozen. But, if you are a frozen foods chef, the choices there are just as many. The demand for healthy frozen entrees and meals has risen right along with the demand for greater variety. Today, you can walk down any frozen foods aisle, and see as many healthy choices as unhealthy ones. The decision is yours, you can either set a good example, or you can choose to set a bad one. Time is not the deciding factor, nor is availability and choices.
Okay, now back to our Thursday afternoon juggling act. You've dropped Heath at baseball practice, picked Jamie up from basketball, and you have exactly fifteen minutes to make a decision about dinner. As you sit at the red-light contemplating your options, there is a Subway, a Pizza Hut, and a grocery store with a deli in the same shopping center. How can this still be a difficult choice to make?
Today's food diet consists mostly of meat and starch. The fast food drive thru at your local burger joint doesn't offer a menu of fresh fruit and vegetables. We've become a nation of massive carbohydrate consumers. But that wasn't the original plan.
During the days of hunting and gathering, the daily diet consisted mostly of fruits, vegetables and other plant life. Meat was a scarcity, and bread was virtually non-existent. During this period in time, there was no problem with obesity. Of course, hygiene was a problem. It seems now we've solved many of our personal hygiene needs problems, and forgotten that in order to survive and enjoy the fruits of our labor, we must pay attention to our eating habits. Our health is the most important asset we have.
Our physical makeup, metabolism, and nutritional needs dictate a far different diet than we have come to enjoy. Cakes, cookies, colas, and kool-aid are not on the healthy diet plan. Vegetables, fruits, nuts, and plenty of water are the key ingredients to a healthy person. Even the food pyramid put together by the USDA doesn't accurately reflect our daily needs for optimal health.
Meat is necessary for protein consumption, but it can be obtained from other plant sources. Peanuts and other nuts contain high quantities of protein. Eggs and cheese also contain protein. If meat is to be consumed, fish would be a better choice. It is high in the omega acids and actually contributes to our health.
Red meat, pork, and chicken were never intended to be our daily staples. They were luxuries, to be consumed in small doses, only a few times a week. Today, we will have meat before we have vegetables.
And, then you can take a look at the vegetables we do consume. The starchier the vegetable, the more ways we can invent to prepare it. Look at the potato, we've found more uses for this food, than any other on the planet. It also has the highest level of starch, and can send our blood sugar levels soaring.
Even our medical profession is still researching what our bodies should consume. Everyone thought they had it figured out when the food pyramid was put together. But now some fifty years later, we have a nation facing an obesity epidemic, and although we are living longer, our hearts are not as healthy as they should be given all the healthy foods we have to choose from, and the exercise facilities available. Maybe we still have long way to go in coming full circle with what our ancestors had no choice in doing: a diet of mostly vegetables. The vegetarians may be way ahead of the rest of society.
The other side of this coin has to do with our calorie intake. Consuming fewer calories keeps us leaner and healthier. All of our body processes function better, when we cut our calorie intake to a level this is about 2/3 of the daily recommended intake of 2000 calories. So how did we arrive at 2000 calories per day? This figure was taken based on the average consumption of a physically active, middle-aged male. Does anyone female see a problem here?
What we really need to consume for optimal health is a personal formula. Each and every person is different, calorie and exercise needs are unique to every person. When our medical profession, our health experts, and any other concerned organization come to realize this fact, and formulate a way for individualized programs to become commonplace then we, as individuals, will be eating what we need to eat.
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The foods of the food pyramid are necessary for our optimal health. But in what quantities and which ones are the best? These are questions that must be tailored to our individual needs. And the answers will benefit our unique needs. Healthy for me, is not the same as healthy for you. Everyone's nutritional needs are different, and everyone's level of calorie consumption is different
As you study the food pyramid published by the USDA, we can examine some of the better foods, and try to decide what particular formulas make us the healthiest on average. The average person needs an hour of physical exercise, six to eleven servings of grains, two to four servings of fruit, three to five servings of vegetables, two to three servings of meat, two to three servings of milk, and enough water to make it all work.
The guidelines found on the general chart of the pyramid are as listed above, and this could be the formula for an eighty year old man, or a fifteen year old girl. The recommended daily calorie intake is just as vague and generalized as the daily food intake pyramid. Can you see how this might not work for either one? When a guideline published is this general, it is up to the individual to determine what food regimen will keep them at their healthiest, provide the caloric intake necessary, but not excessive.
If your goal is to cut calorie consumption, you would be among the latest wave of health conscious individuals who believe that a low calorie intake keeps us in our healthiest condition. There have been studies done with rats that lend credibility to this claim. Lowering the rat's body weight by only 10% yielded a longer life; longer life spans were noted for up to a 30% cut in daily calorie intake. Anything past that point produced unhealthy consequences. Now, exactly how this translates into human life spans, we're not sure.
Once the importance of a particular food plan is understood by us, it is a simple as learning our multiplication tables. We simply memorize the food requirements, and incorporate it into our daily intake as needed. As you take the time to incorporate a healthy food plan, don't' forget the necessity of exercise in our daily lives. In order to keep our bodies healthy and functioning as expected, we need to keep it fit. This comes through proper amounts of exercise
According to the guides published by the USDA, calorie needs vary from one age group to another, one gender to another. So how do you determine what your individual needs are? You can setup a journal for recording your daily caloric intake for about a month. Make a note of your weight each day. If you don't gain any weight during the course of that month, you're eating your recommended calorie level in order to maintain your weight. Now, take that calorie information, use the food pyramid and comprise a combination of foods that will help you achieve this recommended daily intake, and still be enough to be filling and please the palette. You now have an individualized healthy eating plan for weight maintenance. To produce a reduction in body weight, simply begin to cut calorie intake, without cutting too much from the daily recommended servings.
This guide will not work for Brother Bill or Sister Sue, but it is the unique blueprint for you. It is at this point in the process that we seem to lack the direction to finish what the government started. Whatever the formula, your food intake and level of calorie content, will affect your general overall health everyday. Overeating can bring on obesity, under eating can bring about anemia; you need to find that one right guide for you, and plan, plan, plan.
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As a teen, most of us don't even care if we're eating right, or begin to understand the implications of poor eating habits. As we age, however, we do begin to notice the effects of improper exercise, poor eating habits, and how they affect our health. Today, as the baby boomers begin their retirement years, health concerns and questions are on the rise. These aging boomers are more concerned than any previous generations about their good health, their ability to keep their good health, and how their diet affects their health.
You don't have to be a doctor to understand the relationship between too much consumption of food, and health disorders. You simply have to look around at a nation approaching an obesity epidemic to understand what happens when you over consume in general. One a smaller scale we wonder about the over consumption of just certain kinds of foods? What happens when you overdo in the sweet department?
There are all kinds of health issues related to over consumption of sugar. Diabetes would be the number one health concern. But, diabetes isn't the only ill effect from over consumption of sugar. Obesity, thyroid dysfunction, kidney malfunction, and intestinal problems can all be directly associated with too much sugar consumption.
What about too much alcohol? The ravaging effects of alcoholism are a continual struggle and medical expense to many companies and citizens in this country, and indeed the whole world. Lost youth, liver problems, brain deterioration, the speeding of other age-related diseases are all side affects of too much alcohol consumption.
Then, we can talk about the effects of too little food consumption. What happens when we don't consume what we need to maintain our health? Gum diseases, heart disease, muscle deterioration, vision loss, and anorexia occur when we don't get the necessary food our body needs.
Even when we can't consume enough actual food, we can supplement the vitamins and minerals our bodies need in order to maintain some healthy functioning. You have only to walk down the aisle at your local supermarket to discover that there has been a vitamin revolution. Every possible vitamin and mineral needed by the body is available in capsule, pill, tablet, or powder form.
Once your body has reached the point of unhealthy functioning, or you have placed such a strain on your body from over consumption that one of the related diseases has taken hold, it's almost impossible to correct one problem without creating another. Once you have become a diabetic, there are so many complications, that simply choosing to diet and exercise is no longer an option. The health concerns you now have far outweigh the easy solution of diet and exercise. Can you begin to see how important maintaining your health is to your quality of life? How important it is to the quality of your spouses' and children's' lives? Your choices directly affect situations with their lives. You should make every effort to keep your health; don't you owe it to your family, if not yourself?
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If I had not gone through several diet and exercise programs, I would not believe the connection that the elements of breathing, exercise and eating share. Since I have however, received quite an education in these three areas, I can vouch for the certain fact that they are all interrelated and do affect the body individually and jointly.
Now, the eating and exercise you may have already figured out, but are you aware of the role our breathing plays in providing the body with the oxygen needed for maximum metabolism? No, most people aren't.
This is how the process works. In order to metabolize food, the body needs certain elements to come together and create the right conditions for food breakdown. Oxygen is one of the elements. The more oxygen we add to the process, the better our metabolic process can work to properly utilize the energy from the food we have consumed.
It is here that our breathing plays a key role in the metabolic process. The deeper, and more efficiently we breathe, the more oxygen we consume. The more oxygen we consume, the more we provide to the metabolic process. Makes sense doesn't it?
What role does exercise play in this process? Well, exercise conditions our body to keep it in optimal shape. To keep muscles functioning correctly and build muscle mass. The more muscle we have, the more calories we burn; the more calories we burn, the better our metabolism is at using up the calories we take in through food consumption.
Can you begin to see how our body is really a well functioning machine? It's a continual circle of events, one feeding off the other. When all the events are coming together properly, we are healthy, happy individuals. It's only when abuse of the system begins to occur, that we put our bodies in jeopardy. Perhaps is we educated our children, while they are young, about the dangers of abusing their body, we would have better equipped young adults. We educate them about the dangers of household appliances that are incorrectly operated, about the danger of driving recklessly, and improper operation of the car they're driving; we just don't take the time to educate them about the most important piece of equipment they will ever operate, their own body.
Exercise, breathing properly and healthy eating are the ingredients vital to the proper operation of the body. Of all the things we ever learn, of all the thoughts we ever entertain, or the abilities we acquire as we grow, our health and the means to maintain it, are the most important. Nothing else works unless our mind and body have been kept in working condition. Have you ever noticed someone who is paralyzed? So many of the choices they could make about how to spend their time, playing sports, skiing, or swimming, have been taken away. The same is true for someone who has abused their body to the point of being an invalid; so many of the choices that could have been made to enrich their lives, have been taken away.
The dictionary defines metabolism as the sum of all biochemical processes involved in life, or the sustaining of life. In application concerning our health, metabolism is related to the intake and use of food. In reference to the case in point it is our ability to utilize our food to the fullest extent.
The body's metabolism is a unique process for each individual person. No two people metabolize food at the same rate therefore no two people have the metabolism. We all use our calories at different rates, with different results. Our metabolism, like our fingerprints is unique to each of us. But the need to understand and accommodate this metabolism is an issue that we all face.
Some people have really high rates of metabolism. In other words, when they consume food, their bodies burn it up almost as fast as then consume it. Then there are those of use who use our food intake so slowly, as to not even notice that we're burning calories. These people who burn quickly are often slim and trim, the people who burn more slowly are the people with a tendency toward obesity.
All of this metabolic process is related to our calorie intake, our vitamin and nutrition needs, our thyroid and endocrine production, and how well all of these processes come together. For years, people have sought ways to raise the metabolic rate. If you can raise someone's metabolic rate, you are then better able to control the burn of calories, especially for overweight or obese people. This would make the goal of better or improved health a much easier reality for those people. Efforts to date have produced very little results. There are foods that we can consume that naturally raise our metabolic rate, but not to a great extent. What we need is a way to directly alter the rate. We need to be able to raise our metabolism to a point where we can actually see a benefit.
Right now, the greatest results in raising our metabolism come from exercise and building our muscle mass, while reducing our body fat. Adding more muscle to the body, in turn causes us to burn more calories, and this helps to elevate our metabolic rate.
What determines our metabolic rate, as far as our genetics? Generally, we tend to inherit the same tendencies for metabolic rates, body frames, and other related body functions from our parents. Thus, the origin of "well, she comes from big people; naturally she's going to be big".
Our metabolism functions also depend on how well we have taken care of our nutritional needs. The process of burning calories and creating energy is a delicate one, and one which must be carefully tended, or it can become imbalanced. It is often through these natural imbalances that we tend to "inherit' our metabolic rate.
I believe through careful analysis, and attention to each person's unique needs, we could bring about a more natural balance of the metabolic burn vs. the calorie intake. To a level where optimal health and weight control are in equilibrium.
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