What is food and drink?
Quite simply the food and drink we consume is used by our bodies to enable us to;
maintain all our bodily systems
Create balance within our body (homeostasis eg regulating blood sugar, temperature et cetera)
produce energy (used in so many ways eg movement, chemical reactions et cetera)
repair damaged structures (injuries)
build new structures (eg build muscle, create new cells, build bone et cetera)
Believe me if you have studied only some of the things our body does on a second by second basis the pure size of functions our body performs just to keep us alive is incredible, our nutrition enables our body to do these things correctly.
Losing Sight
The problem is many of us have lost sight of this, when we put food in our mouths we don’t consider that it will provide us energy over the next few hours or that it will be used to produce blood cells that need replacing or that it will be used to repair the slight sprain we got from our last run.
We feel hungry and we eat something and that is that, I think if you were honest with yourself not much thought goes into what you eat other than the fact that you like it, it tastes nice and it’s time to eat.
We Are What We Eat
As I have mentioned the Food and Drink that we consume will eventually be broken down and used for energy or it will be used to repair or build structures in the body. We quite simply are what we eat.
As we progress you will understand how accurate this statement is, our body is the most important piece of equipment we will ever own yet so many of us don’t look after it and damage it by many means. Poor Nutrition is one of these ways.
All I can say is that if we are what we eat then it makes perfect sense to ensure that we;
Get the right amount of nutrients to carry out our body functions
Get the correct kinds of nutrients to carry out our body functions
Ensure that they are the best quality nutrients available to us as possible Indulging and Bad Food
Please understand that I understand the need to indulge, I am just as partial to goodies as the next person however we seem to be living on them full time now and it is the cause of so many of our nation’s health problems.
As I mentioned before Nutrition requires a degree of discipline but it doesn’t require complete rigidity, we should all indulge it’s what life is all about, but the problem is with the availability of food now it’s so easy to over indulge.
Another problem is that the line between good Nutrition and Bad Food is a bit fuzzy and you would be surprised how many foods you believe are healthy are in fact exceptionally bad for you.
Summary
I really do not for the life of me understand why Good Nutrition and Fitness is not compulsory at school and I don’t mean a few days here and there and PE class that you can get off with a forged note from your mum (yup I’m guilty of that). I mean a serious regular attempt to ensure our children receive the correct knowledge to lead healthier active lives. It would save our country a fortune in health care and would pay for itself many times over.
If you get into the habit of thinking about your food as an energy source and the jobs that it is used for when you choose your meals you would go a long way to improving your Nutrition.
I will teach you in upcoming posts how much we should eat, what kinds of foods we need and some pretty dirty little secrets about things that go in our food that I am pretty sure will make you think twice about eating them again.
