Nutrition

I think it’s vital that schools start teaching primary school children about simple nutrition, as part of the national curriculum. They say that ‘prevention is better than the cure’. In terms of prevention of bad nutrition, when kids finally grow up and learn what is good and what isn’t good for their health, it may be a little too late to break them out of their eating habits. Why not educate them beforehand? Of course, parents play a major role in this too, they are the ones who make the meals after all.

People think low fat foods are good. Quite the opposite in fact, those low fat foods still have high amounts of carbs and many ready made foods are pumped with artificial chemicals such as additives and preservatives. Many people are not aware that carbs = sugar (even if its potatoes – they are complex carbs, and therefore still high for its calorific content just like sweets with their simple carbs). Sugar = calories = excess calories stored as fat if not burned.

What people lack these days is variety in their diets. Healthy eating is not necessarily just eating salads and avoiding fatty foods with fat. I think people are being narrow-minded about the superiority of food to their health. It is not a miracle, and don’t expect to lose weight just by eating right. You need consistency and need to maintain a consistent balanced diet in combination with exercise at the right intensity. (High intensity cardio is to get fit, low intensity is to burn fat – however, it doesn’t work the other way round). You have to believe in yourself. Again, not magic. Research into health a bit more.

Balanced diets are important people!! If you’re inactive, you should aim to have about 51% carbohydrates of your daily intake, about 25-30% fat and around 20-25% protein. It is all about the percentage of nutrients contained in the food you eat, not just the grams. A good free website I used as part of my Nutrition course was fitday.com – a decent way to track your daily intakes over long periods. You can input the foods you eat and it analyses the nutrients and presents the data in the form of graphs and charts. It is also useful to see the calorie intake and the burned calories for weight loss/gain.

I think something else worth a mention is takeaways. Many of these takeaways which you can buy from shops are very easy and much healthier to make at home. Not too long ago I saw a TV programme called ‘Chinese Food Made Easy’ on the BBC. It shows how takeaway dishes can be made with ease, taste better, are healthier and more natural (and you know what goes in it). At the end of the show, the host challenged guests to cook the dish and serve it to the public and compare it to the takeaway. Notably, the homemade one was almost always preferred.

Evidence has also been found to suggest that ready-made meals are likely to cause mood swings and depression in people that eat them. People who avoid such types of ‘artificial’ foods are likely to be happier. Organic is the way to go.