Food for Living

Written By Admin
Dated: February 20, 2007

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Food is more than simply the substance we put into our bodies so that our stomachs don’t rumble. Food is the fuel for our lives. Most people understand the need to eat a balanced diet in order to stay healthy, but these same people usually don’t understand why a balanced diet works. When you know the reasoning behind the food you eat, it is much easier to stay on track with a diet.

Calories - What do you Need?

Calories are how energy is measured in food, so if you lead a more active lifestyle, you need more calories. On the other hand, if you live a more sedentary lifestyle, like most people do, fewer calories are needed to get you through the day. If you find your basal metabolic rate (BMR), the rate at which you burn calories when at rest, you should be able to better calculate how many calories you need to eat every day.

In general, the amount of calories needed are as follows: active children under the age of six need around 1,800 calories per day and those between the ages of six and ten should eat around 2,000 calories. Active males over the age of ten should eat 2,500 to 3,000 calories daily, reducing that amount to 2,200 upon reaching the age of 50. Remember, if you are less active, you need fewer calories because you are using less energy. Women over the age of ten should eat 2,000 to 2,300 calories every day, reducing that to 1,900 calories over the age of 50 and adding 300 calories per day when pregnant and 500 calories per day when breastfeeding. That said, the number of calories you eat is less important than the actual foods you use to achieve those calorie amounts. By looking at the food groups, you can easy learn how to fuel the body with calories properly.

Carbohydrates

Since fad diets like the Atkins diet encourage people to cut back on carbohydrates, most people automatically assume that carbs make you fat. That’s simply not true! There are good ways to include carbohydrates into your diet; to learn how, it is crucial to understand the glycemic index.

When your body breaks down carbohydrates, it creates glucose in the body. This is the main fuel of energy to help you stay awake and active during the day. The glycemic index rates carbohydrates on how fast your body digests them and, in effect, how fast glucose is released into the blood stream. If you eat foods with low glycemic index ratings, like all-bran items, oats, and most fruits and vegetables, the energy is released slowly as you need it, but if you eat foods with high glycemic index ratings, like white bread, baked potatoes, and white rice, you get a burst of energy quickly, and whatever cannot be immediately used is stored as fat. A good diet, therefore, discourages certain kinds of carbohydrates, not all of them.

Carbohydrates are also a good source of fibre in some cases. Fibre helps your body with the digestive process, so you should check the labels of carbohydrate-rich foods in order to find good sources of fibre as well.

Protein

Proteins, which you get from meat and dairy products, are needed in your body for one main purpose - building muscle. If you don’t get enough protein in your diet, you will begin to lose muscle mass and gain fat, as the protein in your tissues breaks down to be used for energy. The most essential property of protein is amino acids. There are nine amino acids that are essential for life and finding a good balance is the best nutritional guideline.

Fruits and Vegetables

Fruits and vegetables are great for our diets because they provide carbohydrates as well as vitamins and minerals. For example, you can get vitamin C in citrus fruits, broccoli, red peppers, and cranberries or vitamin K in leafy greens, like spinach. Vitamin deficiency occurs when you don’t get the vitamins you need, and the consequences can be dangerous. On the other hand, vitamin overdose can be dangerous as well. You aren’t extremely likely to experience vitamin overdose by just eating foods, but supplements can cause this condition when not taken properly.

If you are worried about not eating enough fruits and vegetables to get the daily vitamins and minerals you need, enriched and fortified foods are now made that you can buy. These foods, like bread, have nutrients manually added into them and can be especially helpful if you have children that won’t eat their vegetables!

Fats

The main way to categorize fats is by grouping them as saturated fats or unsaturated fats. Butter, dairy products, and meat usually have high levels of saturated fat, while unsaturated fats can be broken into further categories: trans fatty acids (eg, found in biscuits, cakes, pies, take away food), monounsaturated fats (eg, found in olive oil and nuts), and polyunsaturated fats (eg, found in seafood and soy beans).

Dieticians rate fats as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ based on how they effect your cholesterol. There are two types of cholesterol in the body. HDL (high-density lipoproteins) is actually good cholesterol that we need to regulate certain functions, produce hormones, and digest foods. LDL (low-density lipoproteins) on the other hand, is the bad cholesterol that clogs arteries. There is enough of this kind of cholesterol produced in the body, so we don’t need it at all, but foods high in saturated fats and trans fatty acids raise the levels of LDL in our bodies and are therefore considered bad fats. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, on the other hand, work to combat LDL and provide levels of good cholesterol – HDL - for our bodies’ needs. If you’re interested in low fat cooking, therefore, switch from using products like butter to products like olive oil.

Proper nutrition hinges on your ability to regulate not only the calories, but the nutrients you eat. Remember also that exercise is extremely important. You need food to live, so by learning which foods are best for your body, you can learn how to have the highest quality of life possible.