Improve Your Health by Choosing The Right Dietary Choices
Recent dietary research has uncovered 14 different nutrient-dense foods that time and again promote your good health. Called “superfoods,” they tend to have fewer calories,more essential fatty acids and increased levels of organic vitamins and essential minerals, and many disease-fighting antioxidants.
Beans (legumes), berries (especially blueberries), broccoli, seaweed, nuts (especially walnuts), oranges, pumpkin, salmon, soy, spinach, tomatoes, fowl such as turkey, free range chicken, whole grains and oats, and yogurt can all help reduce your risk of developing diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and some forms of cancer. And where one food might have an effect on a certain part of the body, it may also help with other body functions and performance, since the body is more than the sum of it’s parts. With these foods as the base of a balanced, solid diet, weight loss diets and other fly-by-night programs can become a thing of the past in your life.
In contrast, the ill-effects of an unbalanced diet are several and varied. Low energy levels, mood swings, lack of energy, weight gain, feelings of being uncomfortable with your body are just a few signs that your diet is imbalanced. An unbalanced diet can cause problems with maintenance of body tissues, growth and development, brain and nervous system function, as well as problems with bone and muscle systems. Proper protein levels are essential for proper metabolism. However, mass produced meats are generally filled with hormones, chemicals and other unhealthy additives;a solution is grass fed meats. Returning to traditional farming has proved that farm fresh eggs are more nutritious providing twice as much vitamin E, six times more beta carotene and four times more essential Omega 3 and 6 fatty acids with half as much cholesterol as store bought eggs.
Our modern diets based on prepackaged convenience or fast foods are sorely lacking in many vitamins and minerals, are high in carbohydrates, salt, and fat, which can affect our mental capacities as well, and cause irritability, confusion, and the feeling of ‘being in a fog’ all the time. Our bodies are full but often we are suffering from malnutrition. Symptoms of malnutrition include lack of energy, irritability, a weakened immune system leading to frequent colds or allergies, and mineral depletion that can trigger a variety of health concerns including anemia. Some doctors believe that poor nutrition, especially mineral depletion is the foundation of all diseases.
And since the body is interconnected, realizing that an unhealthy body will result in an unhealthy spirit only makes sense. When we make better food choicesand complement them with other nutrient-dense and healthy fresh foods, our spirit will be vitalized and healthy as a direct result. Superfoods can be the basis of a sound, healthy, nutritious solution to healthy long life.
- John Watson