The Nutritional Value of Food

When you ask about the nutritional value of food it's like asking if the fuel in your car's gas tank is any good ... by David Brant, who became a successful althlete in high school, has studied health and nutritional issues for over 15 years and personally uses many fitness ideas and supplements that he writes about.

We, today, don't often stop to think about the nutritional value of food. We think about the taste of food, or how filling it is for us, or whether it is supposedly "heart healthy" ... but the nutritional value of food eludes our thinking for the most part, at least for most people. Food is our energy, however. Although it is also more than that, as it is also one of life's greatest pleasures and the preparation of it can be an art form, food is primarily for our energy.

When we talk about the nutritional value of our food, it's true that we are talking in part about the importance of getting a balanced diet that provides us with much goodness in terms of the substances that our bodies need. But beyond that, and more importantly, we are really talking about how to keep our nutrient-giving foods as nutritional as possible. This is not as easy in modern life as at first it is assumed to be by most people.

Barriers To Keeping Foods Healthy

• Too many regulations (including subsidies) concerning farming methods and practices have led to a lot of soil depletion, which in turn leads to crops that aren't as nutritionally rich as those very same crops used to be. An apple a day today is not what an apple a day used to be, rather like the value of a dollar.(See Nutritional Facts on Fruits.)
  
  
• Even with our 21st century technology, shipping over long distances results in reduced nutritional value of food before it is eaten.
  
  
• Much of the average person's diet today consists of processed foods. These foods may taste great and seem to fill us up, but they only offer us a very narrow sliver of our total nutritional needs. Again, this mainly has to do with attempting to comply with wrong-headed regulatory or "health advisory" efforts. Read about fast food nutritional information or McDonald's Nutritional Information for more details.
  
  
• People today are addicted to "quick energy" foods such as "white" grains and sugars and high fructose corn syrup, without even realizing it. These energy sources pass very quickly out of the body, because they are burned first. They offer nothing in the way of sustained energy, they are very narrow in their nutritional needs supply, and they lead to people becoming overweight because they short-circuit the metabolism by not making it do any "real work".

Getting More from what we eat

So, we do need to eat better foods, generally speaking. We can do this by: trying to buy as much locally-produced food as possible; keeping a garden for ourselves; preparing our own meals, not relying so much on "TV dinners"; and replacing those refined and sugary foods with more whole grains and the use of different (but not artificial) sweeteners like brown sugar, honey, and stevia. (See Nutritional Value of Common Foods, the Food Nutritional Value in Packaged Foods and Footnotes to and Label Lingos of Food Nutritional Values)  There are also a couple of other things we can do:

• Don't overcook the veggies. Sometimes this can't be avoided, such as with making stew, but when you're having your veggies on the side, use microwaving or steaming below 108 deg F. If you overcook the veggies (or fruits), you destroy their digestive enzymes (DEs) and harm your nutrition. (See Nutritional Values of Vegetables, Nutritional Value of Fruit, Nutritional Value of Beets.)
  
  
• Drink plenty of water. This helps you preserve your bodily-produced DEs. If you live in an urban or suburban area, use a water filter.
  
  
• Take nutritional supplements. This can include drinking 100% fruit or veggie juices or smoothies.
  For an easy complete supplement, the Total Balance line from Xtend-Life offers special formulas especially for Children, Men and Women.
  
  
• Want to lose weight?  Consider a raw food weight loss program.
  
  
• Learn about Organic Food.  Is it all it is cracked up to be?
  

Be mindful of the nutritional value of your foods. Your life will change...for the better!

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