Healthy Food for Long to Come
If I said “nutritional health” most people would almost immediately start
thinking about carbs, counting calories, and the latest dieting scheme.
People never really stop to think about what those things are going for them
though. Like, what good is counting calories if all you know about them is
that they are in everything you eat? What good is monitoring your intake of
carbs if you don’t understand what carbs do for you? And why would you
ever try a new dieting scheme if you already knew how to eat healthy in the
first place? The thing is, people don’t know, or understand, these things.
With all that we eat, all the activities we engage in while we eat, and all of
the things that are started because of the food we eat, not enough people
stop to think about the implications of how we’re eating. Yes, people can
always diet and measure how much of something they eat but what good
is that if they don’t know why they are doing it?
One of the things people always seem to think about when they want to
improve their nutritional habits is the fact that they eat a lot at one time. I
will admit that the quantity of what you eat is important. You shouldn’t eat
more than you need to not feel hungry and you shouldn’t eat just because
you are bored. There are actually calculators to tell you the amount of food
you should eat based on height, weight, gender, age, and activity level. It
tells you an average amount of carbs, proteins and fats you should have a
day, based on the above things.There is more to nutrition than just that. It’s
also what you eat. Now, I know when I say that people are going to start
thinking of the stereotypically healthy foods like fruits and vegetables, but
there is so much more to it than that. The quality of a food is not just
measured in whether or not it sounds healthy, it’s measured in the food’s
effects on your body.
When I say that, I am mostly talking about the measurable effects of eating
good types of food, like lean meat such as salmon or cod, natural fats from
nuts or seeds instead of prepacked trans fat from things like poptarts, and
carbohydrates low in glycemic index (the system used to determine food’s
effect on blood sugar levels) much like fruits and other organic foods. The
proverbial key to better nutrition is to find the balance between all of these
things. That’s not to say that you have to give up all of the fatty greasy
foods you love to have, or you have to stop going over to your family
reunions because all they serve is fried food and soda. No, you can still
enjoy all the things you normally would and you can still swap stories with