It is no secret that the food you eat plays a big role in how you feel. It is important that what you eat is going to provide you what your body needs. This is a complicated subject, and something that many hours of study have gone into. Due to its complexity, nutrition is something you may shy away from. However, with just a little bit of knowledge, you can be sure that you are not doing your body a disservice. Here you can find a quick overview of some considerations you can quickly and easily add to your meals.
Energy
As the population of the US continues to deal with the obesity crisis, the amount of energy in the food you eat is coming under scrutiny. The mood in many consumers is that more calories means more fat on their bums. While this is true, it is a great simplification, and should be taken with some common sense.
Your body needs energy to live. In fact, most of the energy you burn is just from existing. Your heart rate, breathing, and other systems all need a certain amount of energy to work. If you are too restrictive in the number of calories you are getting from food, these systems can stop functioning correctly. A healthy lifestyle balances out your body’s energy needs with the amount that you consume and swinging to either end of that spectrum is going to be harmful to your body.
Macro Nutrients
Macro nutrients are the main components of food. They are fat, carbohydrates, and protein. Each of these serve a purpose in your body. Throughout recent history, most of these have had misconceptions placed upon them by media and the general public. It is hard to dispel some of the myths surrounding them because a lot of the studies are inconclusive. The general consensuses currently are that all of the macro nutrients are important, but too much of anything can be bad.
Micro Nutrients
These are the tinier parts of the food you eat. Vitamins and minerals fall under this umbrella. You know that these are important but trying to break down each one can be very difficult. Like their macro nutrient counterparts, the studies that are done can be difficult to reproduce. This leaves a lot of misinformation around, and makes it difficult to give exact recommendations. Generally, eating a wide variety of foods lets you increase your chances of getting everything you need. Fresh fruits and vegetables are going to be good sources of several required vitamins and minerals and eating plenty of them is recommended.
In short, a lot of the knowledge around proper nutrition is quite vague. This can be very frustrating if you are looking to find a prescribed method to stay healthy. The good news is that this leaves a lot of room for personal preference, dietary restrictions, and lifestyle in your choices. As the sciences of food increases, the perfect diet may appear, but until then you will just have to rest assured that humans have been surviving on numerous different food sources for a long time. Therefore, there must be a lot of ways to successfully eat, while meeting your body’s needs.
