The topic of nutrition is one that is always present in our lives no matter where we turn. It’s on the news, magazine articles, at school, at your doctor’s office, and even is a major topic for many books.
Over the years, there have been many ideas presented how to structure your diet so you ensure a good state of health. The RDA established by the government recommends certain percentages of nutrients that are claimed to be a healthy standard for all people in this country.
Now you have many scientists and researchers stating that the RDA standards are too low and need to be revised to reflect higher percentages of nutrients. There are other scientists and doctors that claim based on your body type, you should only eat certain types of foods while avoiding others.
Many health officials advise the public to limit total fat intake to a low percentage of their total daily calories. There are other groups that claim eating a good portion of fat in the diet is actually healthy. So, who is right and what constitutes eating healthy?
Well, I think that society has made nutrition much too complex. Trying to calculate every single calorie and each percentage of nutrients every day is a little too unrealistic let alone confusing. I believe we need to simplify the aspect of nutrition in our lives.
Before we do that though, we need to grasp the real meaning of what nutrition is. Nutrition is any food item or substance that supplies the body with vital nutrients that enable it to carry out normal physiological functions.
Nutrition does not constitute food items that either deplete the body of nutrients and/or increase the energy expenditure by the body in order to process that food item. Nutrition from food should supply your body with vital compounds necessary for physiological functioning and not strip away nutrients.
Based on many people’s diets today, there are numerous food items and store bought supplements that actually strip nutrients from the body. To eat too many of these foods and/or ingest poor quality supplements will actually leave your body less nourished than before you ate them. This does not make any sense! A good analogy will serve to explain this concept.
Picture if you will your paycheck that you receive from work. Now, let’s say that every time you get your paycheck, you go to the bank and deposit it immediately. As in the normal case when you deposit your check into your bank account, it reflects as an increase in total account value.
Now