Health – Healthy Food

Healthy Food

Health is broadly defined as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.  A healthy food is another important step towards healthy life.  Healthy food comprises of natural foods, organic foods, whole foods and sometimes dietary supplements.

 Nutrition is the science of food and how the body uses it. What are our nutritional needs?  Our body should get adequate essential nutrients, adequate fluid, essential amino acids from protein, essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals and adequate calories.

So it is important to know what a balanced healthy food is.  A healthy diet supports body’s energy needs and provides human nutrition without exposure to toxicity or excessive weight gaining.  Basically our food must provide us with 1500 to 2000 calories of energy per day. The energy needs depends on our age and our physical activity. For a person doing sedentary job needs 1500 to 1800 calories of energy. For people engaged in outdoor life that is people with strenuous activity need 2000 to 2500 calories of energy per day.

The balanced diet should include all necessary macronutrients and micronutrients.   The macronutrients are the ones that are dietary fiber like cereals, root crops, sugar crops, pulses, fruits and milk products. The micronutrients are the minerals and vitamins.

An ideal healthy food should produce good hormonal control rather than calorie control. This means –

• Reduce chances of diabetes
• Resists occurrence of heart disease
• Resists occurrence of almost all cancers
• Reduce chances of high blood pressure
• Decreased risk of high cholesterol
• Weight loss
• Optimize performance of immune system
• Tone up our complete system for a better performance

To remain healthy one must eat 5 to 6 meals each day, have breakfast within one hour of awakening, make habit of taking meals/snacks every four hours during the day as this maintains the metabolism and controls sugar.

Healthy Diet Guide Line – Daily Requirement (approximately – seek professional advice)

• Starchy food like rice, bread, potatoes etc 30% of your diet
• Fruits and vegetables 32% of your diet
• Protein sources like meat, fish, egg, pulses etc 12% of your diet
• Solid and liquid food high in fat and sugar 10% of your diet
• Dairy products like milk 16% of your diet

Healthy food provides you with more energy stabilize your mood and keeps you healthy.  So make it a practice to have healthy food, moderate exercise and nutritional supplements.  Go To HEALTH INFORMATION

Exercise

Regular exercise is good for health; moderate amount of activity performed three to five days per week can improve your strength, hearts health, one’s mood, memory, to learn and reduce the risk of heart disease.  READ MORE.....