A healthy diet should achieve all of the following objectives: • It should have sufficient calories to maintain one’s metabolic needs and to power you through whatever activities you undertake. However, the number of calories should not be so high that it causes your body to begin storing excess amounts of fat. Stored fat should never be more than 30% of your body mass. • A good diet should have sufficient quantities of fat including monounsaturated, polyunsaturated and saturated fat. This should be balanced by omega 6 and omega 3 lipids. • It should also avoid saturated fats as much as possible, as well as trans-fats or trans-fatty acids as they are sometimes known. • A good diet should also include a significant amount of amino acids (which are complete proteins). This provides replenishment to your cells and transports proteins throughout your body. All the essential amino acids are present in both animal and plant protein. • There must be complete avoidance of directly poisonous substances such as heavy metals and carcinogenic substances. One should also avoid high doses of certain foods that may be alright in small doses but not in large doses, such as: • Food or substances with directly toxic properties such as ethyl alcohol. • Foods that could exhaust the normal functions of the body such as eating refined carbohydrates that need extra dietary fiber to be digested. • Foods that could interfere with other body processes, such as refined table salt.
The checklist seems simple enough because a simple list is exactly what it is. It is just a basic guide – a list of the dos and don’ts for your diet. Your lifestyle is becoming increasingly complex as is the food we eat. The optimal diet has to be more than just the basics. It must include the basic food groups, as well making allowances for your specific health issues and aims.
Next we will look at the essential food groups. Stay tuned.
Introduction
Most of us consider ourselves ‘healthy’ individuals. We may, however, just be blissfully unaware of the grim reality!
According to the World Health Organization, health is a ‘state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’.
Our health is not only maintained because of the advancement and application of the health and medical sciences, we also need to make intelligent lifestyle choices that will ultimately affect our health. It is our responsibility to look after different aspects of our health.
Food or nutrition is the primary source of energy and hence health for our body. Nutrition is the science that studies what and how we eat and the effects it has on our health, such as what food or food components may cause disease or adversely affect health. It also studies food and dietary supplements that can help us to improve our performance, promote our health and help in the cure or prevention of disease. For example, eating food that is rich in fiber can reduce the risk of colon cancer. Also, supplementing daily food intake with vitamin C strengthens your teeth and gums and improves the immune system of your body.
There is a variety of diseased states that can be caused by and cured by changes in diet or supplements. Imbalances in our diet, deficiencies of a particular kind or the excess of a particular form can equally affect our health negatively as they can lead to conditions such as scurvy, obesity and osteoporosis.
In today’s polluted environment, the ingestion of elements that play no role in maintaining or protecting your health such as lead and mercury is also a major health hazard.
Exercise is crucial to maintaining physical fitness. It helps maintain a healthy weight, promotes the building and maintenance of healthy bones, joints and muscles, engenders physiological well being, reduces surgical risks and strengthens the immune system. Proper nutrition is no less important to good health than exercise and when you are exercising regularly, it is even more important to have good nutrition. This helps the body recover after strenuous exercise. On the other hand, proper rest is also important.
We have established that proper diet and nutrition are crucial to maintaining your health. Maintaining a healthy diet involves making choices of what to eat and in what quantity, with the overall aim of maintaining your best and most healthy condition. This involves the intake of necessary nutrients by eating the right amount of food from all the food groups and drinking the right amount of water. Often, we need to consume these essential nutrients as additional supplements to ensure that the body is at its best.
You might be surprised to learn that a lack of proper ‘nutrition’ can also be responsible for weight gain. Our modern diet is unfortunately rich in carbohydrates, fats and sugars but lacking in crucial nutrients such as vitamins and minerals. These nutrients are responsible for ensuring that your body performs at its best. They are the crucial ‘supplements’ that your body needs to survive the stressed out, badly nourished life that most of us lead.
The next article will explore you and your diet a bit more. Stay tuned.
The Environmental Working Group (www.ewg.org) is a nonprofit organization that advocates in Washington D.C., for policies that protect global and individual health. Among the many valuable services they provide is a Shoppers’ Guide to Pesticides in Produce. It is based on the results of nearly 43,000 pesticide tests performed on produce and collected by federal agencies between 2000 and 2004. Nearly all of the data used took into account how people typically wash and prepare produce - for example, apples were washed and bananas peeled before testing.
Of the 43 different fruit and vegetable categories tested, these had the highest pesticide load, making them the most important to buy organic versions - or to grow organically yourself:
Why should you care about pesticides? The EWG points out that there is a growing consensus in the scientific community that small doses of pesticides and other chemicals can have adverse effects on health, especially during vulnerable periods such as fetal development and childhood.
A few other notes from the EWG: Nectarines had the highest percentage of samples that tested positive for pesticides (97.3 percent) followed by peaches (96.6 percent) and apples (93.6 percent). Peaches had the highest likelihood for multiple pesticides on a single sample: 86.6 percent had two or more pesticide residues.
Also keep in mind that maintaining your family’s health is not the only reason to choose organic food. Pesticide and herbicide use contaminates groundwater, ruins soil structures and promotes erosion, and may be a contributor to “colony collapse disorder,” the sudden and mysterious die-off of pollinating honeybees that threatens the American food supply. Buying or growing organic food is good for the health of the planet.
The FDA has finally come to it’s senses and accepted the GRAS (Generally Accepted As Safe)
status of Rebiana or Reb-a, made from the sweetest and purest part of the stevia leaf.
Stevia is is at least 100 times sweeter than sugar, with a low glycemic index. Good news for all of us.
Up until now, US stevia sales have been allowed as a dietary supplement due to it’s low glycemic index levels, but now we may see it used in a broader manner.
Wouldn’t it be great to see stevia replace high fructose corn syrup in the food and beverage chain.?
Estimates put the US market for stevia at around $60m, but with the soft drink companies poised to launch products with stevia in them shortly, this could easily triple. Imagine if it makes it’s way into the food chain? Stock tip, anyone?
Coca-Cola and Cargill have already developed a stevia product called Truvia, and PepsiCo and the Whole Earth Sweetener Company (a subsidiary of Merisant) have their brand called PureVia.
Merisant and Cargill have both petitioned the FDA in the past supporting rebiana’s status as GRAS (generally recognized as safe) for use in food and beverages. Perhaps they also saw the handwriting on the wall.
FDA GRAS is for 95 percent purity, seperating it from a stevia extract, which would put it in the dietary supplement category.
The largest US supplier of stevia, Wisdom Natural Brands, has already said that its stevia-based sweetener Sweet Leaf is self-affirmed GRAS, without FDA approval, and the ingredient will be available in soda or food products by the end of the year anyway.
Japan and Korea are currently the biggest markerts for stevia, but look for this to change.
It’s that time again…The Darwin Awards are finally out, the annual honor given to the persons who did the gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way.
Last year’s winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke machine which toppled over on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out. This year’s winner was a real rocket scientist… HONEST! Read on…And remember that each andevery one of these is aTRUE STORY.
And the nominees were: Semifinalist #1
A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply, because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he vomited into the fireplace in his house. This resulting explosion and fire burned his house down, killing both him and his sister.
Semifinalist #2
Three Brazilian men were flying in a light aircraft at low altitude when another plane approached. It appears that they decided to moon the occupants of the other plane, but lost control of their own aircraft and crashed. They were all found dead in the wreckage with their pants around their ankles.
Semifinalist #3
A 22-year-old Reston, VA man was found dead after he tried to use octopus straps to bungee jump off a 70-foot rail road trestle. Fairfax County police said Eric Barcia, a fast food worker, taped a bunch of these straps together, wrapped an end around one foot, anchored the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, jumped and hit the pavement. Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators think Barcia was alone because his car was found nearby. ‘The length of the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the ground,’ Carmichael said. Police say the apparent cause of death was ‘Major trauma.’
Semifinalist #4
A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. It seems that he and a friend were playing a game of catch, using the rattlesnake as a ball. The friend - no doubt a future Darwin Awards candidate - was hospitalized.
Semifinalist #5
Employees in a medium-sized warehouse in west Texas noticed the smell of a gas leak. Sensibly, management evacuated the building extinguishing all potential sources of ignition; lights, power, etc. After the building had been evacuated, two technicians from the gas company were dispatched. Upon entering the building, they found they had difficulty navigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the lights worked. Witnesses later described the sight of one of the technicians reaching into his pocket and retrieving an object that resembled a cigarette lighter.
Upon operation on of the lighter-like object, the gas in the warehouse exploded, sending pieces of it up to three miles away. Nothing was found of the technicians, but the lighter was virtually untouched by the explosion. The technician suspected of causing the blast had never been thought of as ”bright” by his peers.
Now, the WINNER of this year’sDarwin Award (As always, awarded posthumously):
The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal embedded in the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. Police investigators finally pieced together the mystery. An amateur rocket scientist… had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted Take Off, actually a solid fuel rocket) that is used to give heavy military transport planes an extra ‘push’ for taking off from short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long, straight stretch of road. He attached the JATO unit to the car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO!
The facts as best as could be determined are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3.0 miles from the crash site. This was established by the scorched and melted asphalt at that location.
The JATO, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of 350 mph and continuing at full power for an additional 20 -25 seconds.
The driver, and soon to be pilot, would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, causing him to become irrelevant for the remainder of the event.
However, the automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a height of 125 feet, leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock. Most of the driver’s remains were not recoverable.
However, small fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the crater, and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel. Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron attained a ground speed of approximately 420 mph, though much of his voyage was not actually on the ground.
So you’re ready for the big night out? If you are like a lot of folks, the next day can be a bit trying, so here are a few tips to help with that horrible hangover you may find yourself with.
1. Eat something. You should try to do your drinking on a full stomach. The Mayo Clinic recommends drinking a glass of milk before consuming alcohol because it coats the lining of the stomach and prevents rapid alcohol absorption. Meals containing fatty foods will do the same thing. Keep the stomach full, and you can’t get as much alcohol in there!
2. Moderation, of course, is the best way to avoid hangovers. You can still have fun and not over-indulge.
3. Dehydration is the main enemy here. Drink plenty of water while imbibing to cut down the effects dehydration has on your body. That goes for the next morning as well. But you should be drinking a big glass of water first thing in the morning anyway, right?
4. Take a B-complex supplement and some extra thiamine (100 mg or so) to help with the B-vitamin depletion caused by alcohol consumption.
5. Drink cleaner, lighter beverages. Rule of thumb, the lighter in color, the less toxic impurities from processing are present. Bourbon, rum, and cognac are some of the worst, while vodka is the cleanest.
6. In 2005, the British Medical Journal reviewed eight separate trials for hangover treatments to determine if any of the cure or preventative treatments proved effective. The researchers looked at trials with propranolol, tropisetron, tolfenamic acid, fructose or glucose, and the dietary supplements borage, artichoke, prickly pear, and a yeast based preparation. The BMJ reported with the exception of borage and tolfenamic acid, the trials did not show the products helped ease or prevent hangovers. The study noted there were potentially encouraging results for borage and tolfenamic acid.
7. Avoid that cup of coffee you want so bad the next morning. It is a diuretic, and can dehydrate you even more.
8. Eggs are good the next day to help detox the liver, and bananas will help get your potassuim levels back.
9. Last but not least, avoid the drunk tank. Call a cab. Leave the keys at home. Arrange a ride ahead of time. Stay the night at a friends. Do anything you can to keep the rest of us, and yourself safe.
The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light, I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight. My wife was asleep, her head on my chest, My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white, transforming the yard to a winter delight. The sparkling lights in the tree I believe, completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep, Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep. In perfect contentment, or so it would seem, So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.
The sound wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t too near, But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear. Perhaps just a cough, I didn’t quite know, Then the sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear, And I crept to the door just to see who was near. Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night, a lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.
A Soldier , I puzzled, some twenty years old, All dressed in cammies, huddled here in the cold. Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled, standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.
“What are you doing?” I asked without fear, “Come in this moment, it’s freezing out here! Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve, You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!”
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift, Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts.. To the window that danced with a warm fire’s light. Then he sighed and he said “Its really all right, I’m out here by choice. I’m here every night.”
“It’s my duty to stand at the front of the line, That separates you from the darkest of times. No one had to ask or beg or implore me, I’m proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at ‘Pearl on a day in December,” Then he sighed, “That’s a Christmas ‘Gram always remembers.” My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ‘Nam’, And now it is my turn and so, here I am. I’ve not seen my own son in more than a while, But my wife sends me pictures, he’s sure got her smile.
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag, The red, white, and blue… an American flag.
“I can live through the cold and the being alone, Away from my family, my house and my home. I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat. I can carry the weight of killing another, Or lay down my life with my sister and brother… Who stand at the front against any and all, To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall.”
“So go back inside,” he said, “harbor no fright, Your family is waiting and I’ll be all right.” “But isn’t there something I can do, at the least, “Give you money,” I asked, “or prepare you a feast?” It seems all too little for all that you’ve done, For being away from your wife and your son.”
Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret, “Just tell us you love us, and never forget. To fight for our rights back at home while we’re gone, To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead, To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust, That we mattered to you as you mattered to us.
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