What is nutrition? If you want to be healthy and live a long life you need to not only eat but eat great food! We need food and water to live but we need that food and water to contain what are known as "essential nutrients".
Nutrients are classified broadly into two groups: macronutrients including energy, protein, carbohydrates, fibre and fat and micronutrients which are vitamins and minerals.
Lap Eating Trays
Essential nutrients have to be supplied from outside the body through our diet. That is why it is so important to have a well balanced range of different foodstuffs so that our bodies can extract the maximum goodness from. Here are some obvious benefits from having a good, balanced and varying diet:
It helps us stave off all too common deceases such as those of the heart, high blood pressure and various forms of cancer. It keeps our bones healthy and strong so that they don't become brittle. It provides us with the energy and strength we need for our daily lives. For instance, a deficiency in iron can leave us feeling tired and lack lustre. It keeps us focused and motivated in our lives and daily tasks by providing the right brain food such as plenty of water which helps to keep us hydrated.
Being without an essential nutrient or not having as part of your regular diet is often linked to specific illnesses and chronic deceases. We probably all remember hearing tales of sailors on long voyages who had to make do without good sources of fresh fruits such as lemons, oranges and so on. They developed the decease "scurvy" which is a consequence of a deficiency of vitamin C.
Getting the best nutrition means putting forth some effort on our part. It means getting to know our food and its contents in ways we probably have never bothered to before. We must learn the language of food and how it interacts and affects our body if we are to promote our own health and well being in life.