In a world, where you prefer cold drinks over lemon water. Companies that are selling food packages that are labelled as health drinks like flavoured milk and fruit juices contain added sugar and flavouring. It can confuse to understand the meaning of healthy foods.
It is important for us to eat what is best for our systems. The kinds of foods we eat will define our overall health. Food is a way to prevent and heal various health problems before they become worse.
Therefore, today we will discuss some of the ‘Healthy Foods’ to understand the foods that you eat are providing you with the nutrients you need.
If you find it confusing to understand what healthy food is? Then, just remember this, Foods that nourishes your system with all the essential nutrients that your system needs to sustain and retain energy is healthy food.
Some of the key nutrients are protein, water, minerals, fat, vitamins, and carbohydrates.
How to Recognize Healthy Foods?
1. Whole grains of foods like corn, brown rice, millet, and quinoa.
2. Limited full-fat dairy products.
3. Vegetables and other subgroups like peas, beans, starches and various colourful vegetables.
4. Protein-rich foods like eggs, seeds, soy products, nuts and lean meats.
5. Healthy oils like canola oil, olive oil, flaxseeds oil, and avocado.
The reason it is good for you to be informed about what foods are good for your system and what are essential nutrients that you need to take daily for overall well-being is that only one-fourth of the population eats the required amount of vegetables, oils, fruits and dairy.
It is better to have whole grains instead of refined grains because processed grains do not contain germ and bran and therefore you do not get key nutrients including iron, fibre, and dietary fibre.
Only one out of ten people can fulfil the daily recommended vegetables and fruits. Therefore, it is important to focus on eating foods in their raw form to get the maximum nutrients. It is always to have an apple in its raw form instead of having those packed apple juices with flavouring and added sugar.
But, the problem is if you eat raw food, this would not make enough profit for the food industry and therefore they sell processed foods.
Some of the biggest food brands also lobbied against the health plans to remove junk food from school.
Most of the junk food you consume lacks essential nutrients and contains items that are processed from crops like soybeans (high in calories, fillers), corn, and wheat. You might not understand whether these processed food products are healthy because they are derived from the crops and also the misleading labels trick you whenever you buy such products, thinking they are healthy.
Things you should Know About Labels:
As per the Nielsen report, nearly 60% of people find it difficult to comprehend nutrition labels.
So, the best way to look at the labels is to see the serving size. You might see 180 calories as not a big deal, but that could be for just two cookies. One of the biggest tricks is to see labels like all-natural, whole wheat and zero trans fat and instantly thinking that the product is healthy, but what you don’t know is that the product may contain little or no nutrition after being processed.
Things you should know While Reading Nutrition Labels:
1. Sodium: Females should not consume more than 1500mg, which means 3.8g of salt in a day.
2. Protein: Women who do not exercise over 30 minutes a day should not eat more than 46g of protein in a day.
3. Sugar: Females should not consume over 6 teaspoons, which is 25 g of sugar, in a day.
4. Vitamins: It is better to consume naturally occurring vitamins instead of added vitamins, but that does not mean that added vitamins are not beneficial, but the natural form is better.
5. Calories: The average amount of calories a woman needs daily is 2000 / day and if someone wants to lose weight, then 1500 / day based on 150 lb.
So, it is better to keep a check on your food labels and be aware of what you are consuming in the name of healthy foods. If you eat healthily, this will show on your health with growing age.