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Healthy Eating Habits - Articles, search and news in a single
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What Foods Make Us Healthy?:
The foods of the food pyramid are necessary
for our optimal health. But in what quantities and which ones are
the best? These are questions that must be tailored to our individual
needs. So must the answer to what foods make us healthy be a unique
one. Healthy for me, is not the same as healthy for you. Everyone’s
nutritional needs are different, and everyone’s level of calorie
consumption is different.
We can examine some
of the better foods, and offer advice as to what particular formulas
make us the healthiest on average. The average person needs an hour
of physical exercise, six to eleven servings of grains, two to four
servings of fruit, three to five servings of vegetables, two to three
servings of meat, two to three servings of milk, and enough water
to make it all work.
This could be the formula for an eighty year old man, or a fifteen
year old girl. The recommended daily calorie intake is just as vague
and generalized as the daily food intake pyramid. Can you see how
this might not work for either one? When a guideline published is
this general, it is up to the individual to determine what food regimen
will keep them at their healthiest, and then implement such a plan.
According to the guides
published by the USDA, calorie needs vary from one age group to another,
one gender to another. So how do you determine what your individual
needs are? You can setup a journal for recording your daily caloric
intake for about a month. Make a note of your weight each day. If
you don’t gain any weight during the course of that month, you’re
eating your recommended calorie level in order to maintain your weight.
Now, take that calorie information, check with a nutritionist about
the recommended daily allowances of vitamins and minerals that you
need. Take both pieces of information, calorie intake and nutritional
requirements, use the food pyramid and comprise a combination of foods
that will help you achieve these recommended daily intakes, and still
be enjoyable food. You now have an individualized healthy eating plan.
What those foods might
be, are entirely dependent upon the unique guideline you have just
established. This guide will not work for Cousin Bob, or Aunt Tilley,
but it is the unique blueprint for you. It is at this point in the
process that we seem to lack the direction or the discipline to finish
what the government started. Maybe we need to incorporate these techniques
into a class taught at school. Maybe this would give our young people
the direction and tools they need in order to begin such a process,
make it a lifetime habit, and pass it along to their children.
Once the importance
of a particular food is understood by us, it is a simple as learning
our multiplication tables. We simply memorize the benefit, and incorporate
it into our daily intake as needed. As you take the time to incorporate
a healthy food plan, don’t’ forget the necessity of exercise
in our daily lives. In order to keep our bodies healthy and functioning
off of healthy food, we need to keep it fit. This comes through proper
amounts of exercise.
The ABC’s of Eating would be a great title for an education
course that addresses all of the food groups, the benefits and detriments
of those groups and how to ascertain what our individual needs are
from each category.
That doesn’t
seem like such a difficult concept, but do you see any class being
taught that addresses those issues? No, and more than likely you won’t.
Because our society doesn’t feel like it is an issue that should
be addressed by our education system.
Let me put this proposition before you, however. Has there always
been an evident need to learn to drive? No, driving wasn’t around
until the turn of the 20th century. Driving is included in the education
system, and taught as a matter of course each year. The need to be
educated in the ability to drive is relatively new, and is not one
of the “old world” school topics, but it’s included
because a need developed.
Education about our
eating is a need that has developed over the last 30 years, and has
now reached epidemic portions. Advertisements about our eating choices
are driven by the need to make a profit. The commercials our children
are watching have nothing to do with their real nutritional needs,
or the foods that actually are good for them to consume. Here is where
the educational process should bridge the gap. Just as our education
system teaches our children how to count, read, and write, they should
teach them about their eating habits. We educate our children because
knowledge is power. It provides them with the power they need to make
good decisions, acquire jobs, create new products and processes, and
to live out their lives as they see fit. Shouldn’t they also
have a basic knowledge of how to utilize the food resources around
them?
Teaching and educating
about the basics of the food groups, how they work with your body,
the metabolic process of digesting those foods, how the body uses
and stores energy, and how to keep all those processes working at
optimal levels is as important as understanding the algebraic theorems
and how they apply to our ability to perform mathematically. Determining
just where in the education realm that such a class would fit is another
matter. Members of the educational system will probably tell you that
it simply isn’t a matter of concern for the school system, that
it is an issue best addressed at home. But how can it be addressed
at home, if the person at home has no knowledge to impart? We don’t
just acquire the knowledge needed for intelligent food consumption
with the birth of our children.
The basic food groups
and what foods fall into each category is a topic lightly addressed
during the health classes taught at our middle schools. But what about
the metabolic process of digesting those foods, the interaction of
the food, the nutrients, and our energy needs? Knowing how to differentiate
between what foods will provide both energy, nutrients, and good taste
is a learned knowledge. Do you suppose children would continue to
stuff something in their mouth if we addressed the consumption of
Twinkies in the same way we do dirt?
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