Today, we must determine how much
nourishment we need, how much physical exercise we need, and how
best to accomplish those ends. Calorie needs, nutritional needs,
physical needs, and education about those needs now is information
we should all understand, at least as it applies to our individual
self. If you will visit your local doctor, library, or fitness center,
there is massive amounts of information available to help educate
and to help you make good health choices, no matter what the age
group.
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.
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?
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.
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. Good nutrition should be the ultimate goal of
every person alive.
How Do We Determine Nutritional Need?:
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