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Health & Nutrition

health reporter — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 18:03:05 +0000

What are nutrients?

Every molecule in the body is created by Nutrients & there are more than 45 nutrients. These nutrients build molecules, cells, and tissues of the body.

We get energy from Carbohydrates, proteins, and fats that we eat. These are called macronutrients. These macro nutrients are broken down / metabolized to give energy to the body. Vitamins and minerals (called micronutrients) are not themselves metabolized for energy, but they are important in helping the macronutrients convert to energy.

What is a healthy diet?

The optimal diet has to be individualized to meet your unique needs. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) food pyramid suggests that we use fat “sparingly,” and that our daily diet include 2 – 3 servings of dairy products; 2 – 3 servings of meat, poultry, fish, eggs, beans, or nuts; 3 – 5 servings of vegetables; 2 – 4 servings of fruit; and 6 – 11 servings of bread, cereal, rice, or pasta.

These are general guidelines. Healthy diet is dependent upon many factors like: age, gender, body size, pregnancy, and status of health. A clinical nutritionist or nutritionally oriented doctor can help you determine what type of diet is best for you.

While you know it is important to eat a healthy diet, it isn’t always easy to sort through all of the information available about nutrition and food choices. Nutrition has a vital importance to human well-being. Nutrition should play a leading role to improve our quality of life. Nutrition is a key for reducing your body fat percentage.

Better nutrition means stronger immune systems, less illness and better health. Better nutrition is a prime entry point to ending poverty and a milestone to achieving better quality of life. Safe food and good nutrition are important to all. Basic nutrition knowledge is constantly taking shape every day, producing new diet trends to an ever growing audience of people who want to know the latest and greatest ways to achieve their physical fitness goals.

Get nutrition facts and discover how you can use dietary recommendations to improve your health. As you grow older, getting a nutritionally rich diet becomes even more important. The link between nutrition and health is necessary to achieve optimal health. Good nutrition is a clear path to optimize our quality of life. An important starting point for achieving optimum health is to achieve optimum nutrition and get the proper nutrients from the food. Diet and nutrition are the principle preventive measures against diseases.

Reading labels and eating a diet rich in vitamins and nutrients is optimal for healthy nutrition. Research confirms that good nutrition in the early years of life is crucial for human growth and mental development. The study of human nutrition dates back to the 18th century, when the French chemist Lavoisier discovered that there was a relationship between our metabolism of food and the process of breathing.

The field of clinical nutrition has evolved into a practice that is increasingly incorporated into mainstream medical treatment. The term “nutritional supplement” refers to vitamins, minerals, and other food components that are used to support good health and treat illness.

A clinical nutritionist or nutritionally oriented doctor can help you determine what type of diet is best for you. During the initial part of the visit, the clinical nutritionist will ask you questions about your medical history, family history, and personal lifestyle. In hospitals, nutrition is used to improve the overall health of patients with a wide range of conditions. Effects of exercise and nutrition on postural balance and risk of falling in elderly people with decreased bone mineral density: randomized controlled trial pilot study.

Proper nutrition is a powerful good: people who are well nourished are more likely to be healthy, productive and able to learn. Good nutrition benefits families, their communities and the world as a whole. Malnutrition is, by the same logic, devastating.

Healthy Lifestyle

Healthy people are stronger, are more productive and more able to create opportunities to gradually break the cycles of both poverty and hunger in a sustainable way. Healthy eating is associated with reduced risk for many diseases, including the three leading causes of death: heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Healthy eating is fundamental to good health and is a key element in healthy human development, from the prenatal and early childhood years to later life stages.

Healthy eating is equally important in reducing the risk of many chronic diseases. We spend a lot of money on food, but there are ways to cut costs and still serve healthy delicious meals. When you choose healthy foods instead of sugary or high-fat foods you can actually improve your health by adding extra phytochemicals and fiber. Breakfast foods should be healthy but they have a tendency to be high in fats and sugar.

We always hear that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so why ruin a healthy breakfast. Good nutrition is vital to good health, disease prevention, and essential for healthy growth and development of children and adolescents. Fiber is an important part of a healthy diet.

Many of us work very hard to eat healthy meals, but struggle with the urge for candy, cookies, cakes, ice cream and anything else full of sugar and sweetness. Most experts agree that snacking is a part of a balanced and healthy diet, as long as the snacks don’t pile on empty calories.

When your best efforts go awry, and you order pizza or serve another meal that doesn’t exactly fit into a healthy diet, you still have many options for making it healthier. Just about everyone knows that fruits and vegetables are a very important part of a healthy diet. Having a well-stocked pantry and refrigerator can be a busy cook’s best weapon in the war against resorting to fast-food, high-fat, unhealthy meals. Fresh oil is a source of essential fatty acids, which help keep the skin healthy and the hair shiny.

We believe eating sensibly, combined with appropriate exercise, is the best solution for a healthy lifestyle.

Foods

When you choose healthy foods instead of sugary or high-fat foods you can actually improve your health by adding extra phytochemicals and fiber. The goal is to balance negative foods with positive foods so that the combined rating for all foods eaten in a single day is positive.

If you want to restrict your caloric intake without feeling hungry, find foods highest in any vitamin or mineral or lowest in carbs, saturated fats, or sugars. Our general state of health is partially driven by the types of foods we consume. To make vegetable oils suitable for deep frying, the oils are hydrogenated, so trans fats are commonly found in deep-fried foods such as French fries and doughnuts. Trans fats, beyond a limit, are not good for our health.

Hydrogenation solidifies liquid oils and increases the shelf life and the flavor stability of oils and foods that contain them. Other sources of trans fats are vegetable shortenings, some margarines, crackers, cookies, snack foods, and other foods. Since trans fats increase a products shelf life, many pre-prepared foods and mixes (for example, some pancake mixes and pizza dough) contain trans fats.

The solution: Whenever possible, eat whole, fresh, and unprocessed foods. When buying packaged foods, put in at least as much time into reading labels and selecting products as you do when choosing a shower gel or shampoo. A good diet is central to overall good health, but which are the best foods to include in your meals, and which ones are best avoided.

Fast food has become much more popular of late and all over the world the out cry regarding harms of fast foods is on increase.

Be aware that there is little scientific information about the effect of so-called functional foods –foods to which vitamins, minerals, herbs, or other dietary substances are added — despite their growing popularity in the market place and claims of beneficial effects.

Some common foods, including nuts, wheat gluten, dairy products, fish, shrimp, soy, bananas and eggs may trigger allergic reactions.

Fat

Fats add taste to meals and give one a feeling of fullness when eaten. When you choose healthy foods instead of sugary or high-fat foods you can actually improve your health by adding extra phytochemicals and fiber. Breakfast foods should be healthy but they have a tendency to be high in fats and sugar. The human brain is almost entirely composed of unsaturated fatty acids.

You deprive yourself of more than fats when you go for the fat-free or low-fat salad dressing. We need fats to absorb all the beneficial elements of salads and other fruits and vegetables. Learn which are the right types of fats, to create beautiful, supple skin, and a healthy body.

Eating more whole foods is a good way to replace many of the processed snacks and foods that have a lot of extra sugar, fat (including trans fat), salt, and other things added to them and a lot of good things taken out, like fiber. In addition to food labeled fat-free and low fat, healthy low fat foods include most fruits and vegetables.

Carbohydrates, proteins, and fats (called macronutrients) are broken down (metabolized) to give the body energy. For example, lowering fat and cholesterol intake and adding whole grains to the diet can prevent atherosclerosis (plaque build up in the arteries), which can lead to heart disease or stroke.

Fish is high in omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential components of cells and can protect the heart from, for example, fatal arrhythmias (abnormal heart rhythm). Omega-3 fatty acids found in cold water fish (such as herring, tuna, and salmon) have been reported to reduce inflammation and help prevent certain chronic diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, and arthritis.

Safe food and good nutrition are important to all. Basic nutrition knowledge is constantly taking shape every day, producing new diet trends to an ever growing audience of people who want to know the latest and greatest ways to achieve their physical fitness goals.

Did you know that you can drastically decrease your chance of heart disease and cancer by eating a healthy diet and following the recommended nutrition guidelines?

By: Pradeep Mahajan

Is Food For Thought Fattening?

health reporter — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:36:54 +0000

Every day there’s something new about what foods are good for us and what ones aren’t. Whether eggs, coffee and chocolate are good or bad depends on who’s talking. Red wine is supposedly good because it has an anti-aging ingredient, but I expect experts will change their minds about wine too. If wine has an anti-aging ingredient, why does it improve with age?
From a very young age I was told to eat all my vegetables because they’re rich in vitamins and minerals. Carrots are rich in carotene, a chemical that converts to vitamin A. Carrots are good for skin, hair and nails. They’re supposedly good for eyesight too, but I was suspicious about that as a child and I still am. If carrots are good for eyesight, why can’t the Easter Bunny see that it should be the Easter Chicken who delivers the colored eggs?
Broccoli fights cancer and heart disease and is better for skin than sunscreen. Being an independent politically speaking, I never participated in Bush bashing – not until Bush #1 bashed broccoli. He said it left a bad taste in his mouth. Excuse me. Politics leaves a worse taste in the mouth.
And then there’s okra. Okra’s in the same plant family as hibiscus and cotton – and tastes like it. I’m a vegetarian. Vegetables are meant to be my friends, but that sticky substance that oozes out of the pods when they’re cut makes me think okra suffers from SDS – Seventh Day Syndrome. If God hadn’t rested on the seventh day, okra could have been improved.
Bread is said to be the staff of life, but there’s bread and then there’s bread. Unrefined bread is the good one because it still has all its healthy fiber. Refined bread – white bread – is the bad one because it only tastes good – and with peanut butter it tastes even better.
One of the first things I learned about food as a child was that food that doesn’t taste good is good for you. The second thing I learned was that I had to eat all of it before I could have dessert.
Dessert was always some form of sugar and I still don’t understand why sugar isn’t good for us. It’s a carbohydrate. Our bodies convert carbohydrates to energy. Am I the only one with enough energy to think sugar should be one of the basic food groups?

Food Flavors and Ingredients Outlook 2009

health reporter — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 17:46:54 +0000

The dramatic economic events that unfolded on the world stage in 2008 were accompanied by fear, sheer panic and the realization that it is impossible to isolate serious problems on Wall Street from those on Main Street. With this as the backdrop heading into 2009, perceptions of the health of the overall economy and personal financial security will have a major impact on what consumers will eat and drink, both at home and away. The focus of this report, as in years past, is to highlight the flavor and ingredient trends anticipated in 2009 along with valuable insights relevant to the foodservice and retail markets. In this edition, Packaged Facts takes a look at seven key categories that will drive flavor and ingredient trends in the coming years. To gauge how trends are (or are not) moving forward, we’ve included our expectations for last year, along with predictions for 2009 for each of the following categories:

Is Organic Food & Organic Farming the Future?

health reporter — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 05:35:57 +0000

Businesses such as GuideMeGreen green directory and the co-op offer a real alternative for people concerned with these issues and with businesses that combine a strong ethical dimension in tandem with making profits.

Here are some of the main features of organic farming:

• Organic farming severely restricts the use of artificial chemical fertilisers and pesticides.

• Instead, organic farmers rely on developing a healthy, fertile soil and growing a mixture of crops.

• Animals are reared without the routine use of drugs, antibiotics and wormers common in intensive livestock farming.

Synthetic dyes and ingredients such as Sudan1 were in the national news in February and can cause cancer. See www.food.gov.uk for further details. Genetically modified (GM) crops and ingredients are not allowed under organic standards.

Why Buy Organic?

It has never been easier to shop for organic food, and there has never been so much choice. Every food category now has an organic alternative. Its also common sense; organic food is good food. Good to eat, good for the environment, good for the small-scale farmers and the farm workers who produce it.

Chefs across the country are committed to using organic ingredients because plants from healthy soils and organically fed livestock provide us with more flavorful food. Organic foods allow true flavour to shine through unlike other non-organic foods that look and taste good but are often full of E numbers and artificial flavourings and ingredients.

By supporting local, sustainable and organic farms in your local community you also support the larger community of which we are all a part. By eating organic food you are providing the healthiest choice for your family and supporting the farms that provide us with healthy and ecological neighbourhoods.

The ‘go local’ food movement is flourishing – over 15% of people buy organic food locally and this number continues to rise as the number of farmer’s markets, box schemes, cafes and restaurants serving organic food increase. GuideMeGreen helps you to find locally produced foods which are fresher, healthier and more economical. It cuts down on transport costs and ‘food miles’ where an average shopping basket can include fruit and vegetables transported from all over the world.

The big supermarkets in the UK are about to introduce there own vegetable box schemes. This is good because the supermarket schemes should encourage more people to buy organic food and are likely to raise the profile and public awareness of the benefits of organic box schemes in general. These new organic consumers will hopefully become convinced of the benefits of organic food and become more interested in and aware of the advantages of buying local too. The supermarket schemes could therefore be a positive first step on people’s journey to buying organic, local food generally and perhaps moving on to subscribe to independent box scheme businesses – as well as supporting other local food outlets like farmers’ markets or independent retailers.

The supermarkets themselves may find their businesses becoming subject to more far-reaching changes, as their customers are exposed to the principles and practices which inspire the original local food and grassroots box-scheme movement.

Prepare Your Own Food For Health

health reporter — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 05:42:49 +0000

If you eat fast food every day for lunch, try having it just every other day. When you start by taking small steps, it does not seem like you are cutting out all of the foods you love and you can take your time to learn about healthy foods which, believe it or not, you can love equally as well. Who would not agree to that old adage – health is wealth.

Life is so much better if you are free of disease and you can enjoy an active life style. Proper diet and adding good exercise can keep many diseases at bay.If the body receives the proper nutrition, it is better for the immune system in it’s fight against infections and free radicals in the body. When your immune system is healthy, if you get ill, recovery is much faster.

Cook at home. Home cooking provides a better control of food and noticeably reduces consumption of trans fat, sugar, salt, and numerous food additives. Commercially prepared foods like hamburgers, hot dogs, fried potatoes, chips, cakes, and crackers are probably the biggest source of trans fats in our diet. Make your own pizzas, burgers, cakes and other things you like. Sure it takes time, but what is your health worth?

cook with the seasons and use ingredients that are as fresh and locally produced as you can get without undue expense or hassle. Organic produce is desired because it is better for you and the dirt. We don’t think about it, but fertile dirt is a precious resource. Without it, we don’t eat.

Cooking at home also provides a more relaxed, laid back, slower atmosphere for the meal. Joy is a wonderful anti-aging remedy, so enjoy and savor your food! When you eat slowly, you taste the food more and you are satisfied with less. Eating slowly gradually reduces your appetite right from the time you start to eat. Mealtime is fun and relaxing. It’s a time to catch up with friends and family and enjoy each others’ company. I believe that it’s really important to be relaxed and ready to eat. Relaxation aids digestion and nutrient absorption.

The hard part about cooking at home is that you sometimes find yourself at a loss for what to make. Here you are going through the cupboards trying to please everyone with something interesting but everyone responds with “no I don’t like that” or “no thats boring” or “no we had that 2 days ago”.

Most of us never know that many of the tasty and rich dishes as well as the side dishes that we relish at parties, receptions and restaurents were in fact prepared very quickly and easily with little effort. Therefore this means that if you have the will and ideas, you too can make many delicious dishes during a special occasion with little time. The trick is to choose a simple meat dish and dress it up with more decadent side dishes. You will be surprised to know that the rich side dishes which were in greater number then the meat dish, were, in fact very simple and easily made while the main meat dish had to be prepared with great culinary skills.

I usually don’t cook with precise measurements and like to vary the dishes seasonally. After you follow a recipe once, play around with seasonings the next time to suite your own tastes better and use what you have on hand. Another useful tip for cooking for special occasions is never cook anything that is foreign to you or you don’t really know about its process as this will take a lot of your time and you may make mistakes.

When you are on a journey to healthier eating and preparing healthy meals, it can be challenging because many of the foods you prepare may seem bland and frankly, boring. To compensate, you turn to seasoning spices, which are a terrific way of adding flair to your healthy meals, making it much easier for you and your whole family to enjoy. When we are trying to eat healthy we often use spices to make our dishes more appealing and exciting.

Dinner is a great classic. That is the time when families bond; daily activities are shared; we reveal our secrets and form lifetime memories. Not enough people make the time for an enjoyable dinner with friends and family and great food. Take-out has taken over. The positive thing to cooking at home is that it’s made with all KNOWN ingredients and your not surprised by what ends up in your dish or what ends up on your waistline.

Eating Younger with Anti-aging Food Supplements

health reporter — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:06:35 +0000

Several may remember learning about the five food groups when elementary school. We knew from all of our superiors that it was important to eat right in order to get the right amounts of nutrients everyday. Of course, the intentions of the pyramid of food changes as one grow older and begin to go through several changes in their body. If you are trying to figure out exactly how to use the five food groups now, you can consider how it will help with anti-aging.
If you aren’t getting exactly what you need from the food groups, you might want to find different ways to balance out. This isn’t just good for your health; it’s also good for other things that your body needs. By having the right food supplements, anti-aging can be supported along with the other needs that your body can have met. Knowing exactly what food supplements to take can help you improve your health and slow down aging.
The food supplements that you find should contain a variety of ingredients that come from the break up of the food that are strongest in the supplements. One of the most important parts of this is to make sure that anti-oxidants are included in the formula. This is one of the major ingredients to help with cell regeneration and to balance out different areas of the body that contain supplements that they shouldn’t. You might also want to make sure that the anti-aging food supplements contain alpha hydroxyl acids, which will also help to balance out the levels of pH and other nutrients in your system.
With any of the anti-aging food supplements that you find, you will also want to make sure that they are high in specific vitamins. Vitamins A, C, and E for example are a beginning to helping with anti-aging. There may be other secondary vitamins that are in your food supplements, but these will be the main that you want to find for anti-aging. You will want to find something that is strong in these vitamins as well as others in order to help you to begin to combat against the years.
From here, you can find the right supplements that will best fit what you are missing from your diet. For example, you may be able to find specific supplements for raspberries or darker greens. This will give you the nutrients you need for anti-aging without you having to eat the greens that you always used to throw underneath the dinner table. These are all known for containing anti-aging ingredients, and are effective both by chewing or taking in a supplement.
The benefits of anti-aging food supplements won’t stop at helping you to stay younger longer. The supplements are designed to work on specific areas of your body effectively. Some parts of the supplement will be designed to boost your immune system and your metabolism. Other parts of the supplement are designed to help your cells begin to reproduce faster, which will help your skin to stay looking younger and will also help to boost different parts of your system that need more cells and less of the other types of ingredients that are in your system.
If you want to make sure that your skin and body has the right nutrients from food, why stop at eating the pyramid? You can also use anti-aging food supplements in order to ensure that your body is getting exactly what it needs. If you can’t eat all five every day, then it will be important to find an alternate way to balance out your body. By doing this, you will have the ability to continue to feel young and look great.

Weight Loss – Good Food Good Health

health reporter — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 21:12:42 +0000

Weight Loss – It’s Not What You Eat It’s How You Eat It!

Well ladies if you are like me, weight loss is one of the things that is always at the forefront of my mind.

Well at least the bikini season is over now – phew – but alas with good old Christmas just round the corner and all its rich food and trimmings, alarm bells are ringing that weight loss will be the New Years resolution – again.

I always eat a varied diet of good nutritional food, as you may know our family motto is ‘good food good health’ and Christmas is no exception, but this is the time of year that little lapses occur.

Well scientists have found that our modern way of eating is adding to our waistlines and that it is not what we eat but the way we eat it that is making us fatter.

I can remember by Grandma saying to me so many times – chew your food ten times before you swallow if you want to stay slim and slender – if only I had listened!

Apparently scientists have proven wolfing down your dinner can in fact treble the risk of being overweight, this factor is probably very significant in the current obesity epidemic here in the UK and America alike.

It was found that fast eating habits pile on the pounds at an accelerated rate, even when taken into account the type – either healthy good food or ‘junk foods’ – and amount of calories that were consumed, making weight loss difficult.

Well, I know for a fact my bad habits started at school, when the quicker you ate your dinner the more play time you had, but ok I am not that bad any more, but the pressure of having enough time to fit everything in of an evening after work means I am probably still eating faster than I should.

Our brains signals are impeded with the constant impact of fast eating until feeling full, overriding the brains normal signals which usually encourage self control.

Most of us are either trying to maintain or lose weight and are hopping from one weight loss programme to another with little success.

The stomach takes about 20 minutes for it to register being full, so by eating slower and slightly smaller portions can really help with weight loss.

Experts are saying chewing each mouthful up to 20 times really does work as the longer you chew your food for, the fuller you feel.

So just by eating slower you may not always need the dessert you normally have straight away, and it is generally much better to eat smaller meals more often anyway. You will still get the great feeling of having enjoyed a full meal but your stomach will be used to eating less, and will give you that full signal much earlier which aids weight loss.

Complete proper chewing of your food breaks down food molecules, making them more easily exposed to saliva that starts the process of digestion.

Other factors that also contribute to weight gain when eating is the couch potato effect, watching TV at the same time as eating stops the brain getting the signals about the food.

Talking and eating at the same time is definitely not only bad manners, but also makes digestion more difficult because of the air swallowed, again not helping with your weight loss

People who eat until full and eat quickly generally have a higher BMI – body mass index, this is the scoring system that measures levels of obesity, also they have a higher total energy intake than people who do not eat quickly and until full.

Eating slowly allows feedback from the brain saying ‘this is enough’ which helps us to stop eating before we are ‘literally full’. This is the same for men and women alike.

So all we need to do is to re-programme our brains and stomachs and then we should be able to attain some weight loss whilst being able to actually taste and savour the food we eat, instead of just shovelling food down our necks for the sake of it and still not getting the feel good factor that should come with all our meals.

What more I like about this is the fact that we do not need to go out and buy any new special cooking equipment or join any weight loss group, although using this in conjunction with a diet programme can only add benefits.

I admit meals that I eat out are often smaller portions and no better good food than ones I cook at home and yet I feel more satisfied after. This must be down to the more relaxed we are at eating with not having to rush as nobody pays a fortune for a meal to wolf it down and bolt out the door, we take our time and the feel good factor really does kick in, so that is another health benefit as well as the weight loss

This really is common sense that everybody seems to have lost since probably the 1960 / 70s. Family meals are the way to go with chatting in between eating, making it a pleasurable time.

As always a diet of good food for good health is best, as with a varied diet of good food enables your body to receive all the vitamins, minerals and nutrients needed for your good health of body and mind alike.

So the good advantages of a trained stomach not needing so much food to feel full not only make us lighter with the weight loss but should also make the weekly shop lighter on the bank balance.

So it’s thumbs up to slow eating of good food for good health.
Go and try these easy tips and I bet you will achieve some weight loss

Sandra & Ted

http://www.thetalkingbooksite.com