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Archive for the ‘Nutrition’ Category

The recent popularity of “Low Carb” diets has generated a lot of interest in manipulating the ratio of carbohydrates, protein, and fat in the diet to make weight control easier.

It’s recognized that fast food isn’t healthy or nutritious at all and as a matter of fact, it’s completely harmful to you. Therefore it is crucial for you to know about fast food nutrition details that will help you become more conscious of the unknown dangers of eating fast foods which can be even worse than you may ever have thought possible. Americans have for ages been familiar with consuming fast foods and recently, this problem has also spread to the rest of the globe.

Hence, becoming acquainted with junk food nutrition information is necessary for not just Americans and people residing in the western world, but in addition for people living in the third world countries where this fad has quickly caught on and is consequently affecting the more affluent in those parts of the world too. Fast food will make an individual fat and it is also the key cause for obesity in the USA with even kids not being spared.

You can easily understand from taking a look at junk food nutrition details that these foods are full of fat and are packed with calories. Although Americans have to eat not more than sixty-five grams of fat plus that their calorie count shouldn’t exceed two thousand, dependent of age and how much they exercise, when they consume fast foods, they would find themselves consuming much more than the suggested levels. Statistically, this is often 30 percent or more above the ideal level.

Hence, a meal that is made of a McDonalds Big Mac together with some french fries and a shake would cost you fifty-seven grams of fat in addition to twelve hundred calories, which will make sure that you will be unable to stay within the required limits. Often you might consume more than this mini-meal and should you go for a “super size” meal, you would certainly take in a lot more than you should. Whenever the unwanted fat and calories stay in your body, you’d just end up doing lots of damage to your body and it’s health. By doing this you pay a large price for having satisfied a short-term urge to please your taste buds.

Moreover, you can see out of available junk food nutrition specifics that fast foods do not contain sufficient basic fibers and nutrients and there are insufficient vitamins contained as well, all of which are crucial for a person’s health and well-being. After you have carefully learn about these fast food nutrition specifics, you’d probably realize that the threat to your health is usually hidden and therefore fast foods will act as some sort of silent killer which can even result in early death.

It seems that every day there’s a new article or new report published about a diet being good for us or a diet we thought was good suddenly turns out to be bad. A study suggesting that a vitamin has newfound health benefit is published the same week another tells us it harms the health of certain people. Is the entire world confused or do we just not understand the context into which all the information, even that which appears contradictory, fits?

It seems logical that nutrition should be incredibly simple and yet this deluge of information leads us to conclude that it isn’t possible for anyone to understand what is good for us and what is bad for us. By being able to put information from this field into context it is possible to navigate the sea of data and understand why information on nutrition appears to have become so complicated.

In the beginning nutrition was incredibly simple. We didn’t need to know anything. Pieces of plants were picked and eaten immediately. Some of those plants would make us a very ill. Sometimes only certain parts of the plant made us sick and other parts were tasty and nourishing. We simply avoided what we learned to be bad and, in an adaptation unique to humanity, we taught others to avoid bad foods through commandments and lore. Everything else was good by default.

Eventually humankind moved from being simple hunter-gatherers to basic farmers. Some estimates are that this move alone increased food production efficiency by over 50 times. This sparked the rise of civilization because some people were able to stay in one location and develop skills and crafts which benefited the rest of the tribe while others produced enough food to feed everyone else. Because the nutritional value of food is at its maximum when it is ingested directly from the moment of harvesting, the nutritional value of the food lowered slightly as the delay between harvesting and eating increased. Even so the food was still very nutritious and contained very few preservatives apart from brine used to preserve some foods for long-term storage.

Around this time different societies began to develop the understanding that certain foods were beneficial depending on a person’s state of health. Sometimes these foods contained phytochemicals that controlled symptoms and other times they simply contained high concentrations of nutrients that were specifically beneficial for a person’s particular needs at the time of illness.

For example, women would eat iron rich foods during menstruation to counteract iron deficiency during the period of blood loss. At the time they didn’t realize their lack of energy and other symptoms were due to iron deficiency. They simply knew that if they ate certain foods they’d feel better. What some regard today as so-called old wives tales actually represent the first understanding of the relationship between diet and an improved quality of life.

The further humankind moved away from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, the more important this information became.

Fast-forward to the mid-20th century. At this point society had made a major shift from an agrarian lifestyle to an industrial age lifestyle. The percentage of the population directly involved in the production of food was approaching the 2% it is today.

In the United States children were no longer getting up early and working on farms until sundown. Instead they were getting up, having the same large breakfast their parents and their parent’s parents had every morning before going out to work on the farm, and yet they would go to a public school where they would sit at their desks for several hours a day. After school, they would go to the local diner and have a burger and French fries and a malt, only to come home and eat a large dinner with the family.

The cardiovascular disease rate went through the roof. The medical community responded by blaming the massive fat intake associated with all of the foods. These commonly eaten foods once provided large amounts of calories to people working hard labor on the farm. They did not serve a person working a desk job, an assembly line or while attending school. Unfortunately the available research at the time did not differentiate the negative effects that certain fats had on the body over others. The resulting fat-free diet hysteria did not result in a lowering of the obesity rate or cardiovascular disease rate, but people followed these guidelines just the same. As food products such as margarine, vegetable shortening and processed oils were introduced to the market, the available medical data simply could not recognize the detrimental affect these fats would have on long-term health compared to the fats they were replacing.

Another area of confusion involved naturally occurring versus artificially made compounds. In the field of nutrient study, scientists believed that they could duplicate anything in nature more efficiently and more effectively than nature could do so itself. While some researchers continued to study naturally occurring vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and other forms of nutrients in their natural state, other researchers studied the artificial forms of these compounds. Only those able to read the specific data behind the studies were realizing the growing picture that is validated more and more each day. Artificially created nutrients simply were not as effective in the body as naturally occurring ones. In fact in some cases they were actually harmful.

To the untrained eye, naturally occurring and artificially made compounds appear to be the same. To many journalists these differences are not apparent in the published studies unless it is explicitly stated. This leads to a great deal of confusion when the journalists are often regurgitating study information through the media without a complete understanding of the underlying issues or context. Their inability to properly filter this information only makes it appear more self-contradictory and confusing.

While to some it may appear obvious that naturally occurring compounds are more bioavailable and efficacious than artificial ones, such assertions could not be logically proven until the data was available for review. This does make it seem as though the past several generations of humankind have been guinea pigs to trial and error and all of the errors involve humankind attempting to synthesize nature, or to drastically narrow the food supply and selection for the sake of economic efficiency.

When we look back on some of these mistakes, it is apparent that they were largely made due to incomplete data and a certain amount of hubris was mixed in as well. Moving forward, we must realize that the further humankind moves from the hunter-gatherer that we were designed to be, the more important the study of nutrition will become. For the past hundred years, the basis of that study has been a simple categorization of what is good for us and what is not good for us down to the molecular level. In the future, nutritional science will also need to embrace the synergistic effects, both good and bad, of what we put in our body.

At the heart of the confusion is a desire for simple answers. We would all be comfortable with a simple recommendation to eat a certain way, and be done with it. Given the right context, this sort of information is possible, but we need to balance how we were designed to receive nutrition originally with the reality of modern life and modern agriculture. What can you do? Understand that we need to be aware of nutrition because we no longer live the lifestyle of a hunter-gatherer.

Caralluma Cactus, is a succulent plant, which has been used as a natural appetite suppressant in India for centuries. The Caralluma Cactus is relatively unknown to the health & nutrition world, & It’s a new arrival in the relatives of cactii & succulent plants that are becoming increasingly popular for their appetite suppressant, & weight loss properties, as well as their ability to lower blood sugar.

Supplements made from the popular hoodia gordonii cactus from the Kalahari Desert in Africa, are, for example, growing in popularity & usage in the U.S. & Europe.Like hoodia, caralluma fimbriata has been used to suppress appetite, & as a portable food for hunting. it is used to suppress hunger & appetite, & enhance endurance throughout India. it is also sometimes considered a “famine food,” used during periods of famine to suppress appetite. For centuries, people in rural areas of India have eaten Caralluma fimbriata, which grows wild over various parts of the country. Caralluma fimbriata is cooked as a vegetable, used in preserves like chutneys & pickles, or eaten raw. Caralluma fimbriata is believed to block the activity of several enzymes, which then blocks the formation of fat, forcing fat reserves to be burned. Caralluma fimbriata is also believed to have an effect on the appetite control mechanism of the brain. Ayurvedic (traditional Indian medicine) experts have noted that there’s no adverse effects when using Caralluma fimbriata, & the plant has no known toxicity.

A patented, tested extract of Caralluma fimbriata has been developed & standardized by a company called Gencor. Known as “Slimaluma,” the extract delivers the plant in a concentrated form. four of the only products accessible in the U.S. that uses the Slimaluma formula is Country Life’s GenaSlim supplement, which combines the patented Slimaluma extract of Caralluma fimbriata with EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate) from green tea. Together they reportedly have a synergistic effect on appetite control & weight loss. In several clinical trials Slimaluma was shown to be effective in reducing body fat through appetite control.

I was one of those disgusting school children who actually liked to take tests and quizzes! I know, I know, you just hated those kids who, when the teacher said “We’re going to begin today with a QUIZ,” eagerly grabbed a pencil and waited expectantly for the first question, while the rest of the class groaned and tried to hide under their desks.

Hopefully, by now, the idea of a quiz won’t cause you to break out in a cold sweat, and instead, you will have fun testing your knowledge with this basic nutrition quiz.

All you have to do is decide if the statement is True or False. The correct answers follow the quiz.

Remember not to peek!

1.True or False – Nutrition is not a science.

2.True of False – Protein, Carbs and Fats all provide energy for your body.

3.True or False – Vitamins and Minerals do not have any calories.

4.True or False – Water is considered a nutrient.

5.True or False – The RDA stands for Russian Dodgeball Association.

Nutriton Quiz Answers

1. FALSE. Nutrition–the study of the substances found in food and how they work in the body-is actually a science, albeit a relatively new one. This means that what we believe about nutrition should be based on reproducible experimentation and carefully controlled studies. Unfortunately, some of the nutrition information we hear in the news smacks more of junk science than real science. For this reason, when you hear about a new study related to food, read the article carefully-not just the headline-and pay attention to (a) who funded the study, (b) the size of the study and (c) what other reputable scientists are saying about the study. With this information in mind, and a modicum of common sense, you should be able to decide for yourself whether the conclusions are valid, and more importantly, if it will apply to how you, personally, will pursue a healthy eating lifestyle.

2. TRUE. Protein, Carbs and Fats all provide energy–more popularly known as calories. Protein and Carbohydrates have about 4 calories per gram, while fats are denser with about 9 calories per gram. Most people associate Carbs with calories and even Fats, but Protein, in addition to all of its other functions, can not only be used for energy, but can also be stored as body fat. The popularity of the Atkins Diet and other high protein diets, has given the mistaken impression that only Carbs can make you fat, but too much of any of these energy nutrients can cause you to store the excess under your skin or even worse around your vital organs.

3. TRUE. Although Vitamins and Minerals are important nutrients, they do not provide any calories. That means that, when you take your multi-vitamin and mineral tablet and wash it down with water, you have not added in any significant way to your calorie intake for the day. However, these nutrients are involved in most of the processes going on in your body every moment of every day. A deficiency in any one of them would have a negative effect on your overall health and well-being. Calories? No. Vital function? Yes!

4. TRUE. Water is a nutrient, and sometimes considered the most important nutrient of all, since, unlike the other nutrients, you cannot survive more than a few days without taking in water. Water is the main component of your body, and is necessary for most of the processes that are constantly going on inside of you. Although health experts can’t agree on how much water you need to drink each day, most say that at least 8 glasses of this matchless beverage should keep your body running smoothly.

5. FALSE. Well, there may be such an organization, but with regard to nutrition, RDA stands for Recommended Dietary Allowance. Beginning in the 1940′s, the U.S. government established a recommended daily amount for each nutrient based on age and gender, with a special category for pregnant and nursing moms. These amounts have been reevaluated and revised over the years, as we learned more about human physiology and nutrition. However, since there are many more variables than age and gender that may affect a person’s nutrient requirements, the RDA is only a general guide for healthy people, and not necessarily definitive for every individual’s needs. Currently, the FDA is considering a new system that may replace the RDA with something called a DRI, which stands for Dietary Reference Intakes. Are all these acronyms making you dizzy? Me too. TTFN.

Beta Carotene, as an anti-oxidant, supports the cardiovascular system. And, after the body transforms Beta Carotene to Vitamin A, it helps maintain the health of the skin, immune system, and eyes.

And Vitamin A is an essential component of the epithelial cells which guard us from environmental toxins.

Beta Carotene Health Benefits

Beta carotene both lowers cholesterol and helps minimize arterial hardening. It may also benefit sufferers of cataracts, cancer, AIDS, high blood pressure, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, headaches, and asthma brought on by exercise. And it may help prevent cancer and hart disease.

Beta carotene may also, because of its ability to act as a powerful antioxidant within the human body help prevent cancer and heart disease. In addition, because anti-oxidants neutralize the cell-structure damaging chemical reactions of free radical, beta carotene may slow free radical related aging and disease.

A Harvard University study indicated that those who take 50mg of beta carotene daily have their risk of heart attacks and strokes cut in half!

Beta carotene will also improve vision and skin conditions like psoriasis and eczema.
And beta carotene acts to prevent the development of precancerous cells mouth and respiratory tract.
Warnings about Beta Carotene

Ingesting very large amounts of beta carotene can lead to an orange discoloration of the skin and urine; it has also been associated with a heightened risk of lung cancer, so smokers especially should avoid the supplement, or at the very least, consult with their doctors before taking it. Large doses of beta carotene could prove toxic to anyone suffering from liver damage, or lead to birth defects if taken in the first three months of pregnancy.

Beta carotene, in all other situations, has been shown to be extremely safe. Because the body only converts necessary amounts of beta carotene, it does not have the toxic effects of larger doses of Vitamin A. Although no Recommended Daily Allowance has been established for beta carotene, experts advise taking between 2500 IU and 10000IU per day.

How to Choose a Beta Carotene Supplement to Maximize Your Health Benefits

1. Buy your supplements only from producers who practice pharmaceutical GMP compliance. Supplements produced without it may contain dangerous contaminants, or not have the advertised ingredients. A recent report indicated that consumers only have a 20% chance of their supplement actually having the amount of ingredients listed on the product label. You can read more about the he industry-wide problem here.

2. Contact the company you are thinking of patronizing, and if they have a certificates of analysis on file which guarantee that the ingredients in their products are the same as the ones listed on the labels, and that they are fully potent ingredients.

3. Because Beta carotene works most effectively in tandem with other anti-oxidants and carotenoids, we suggest that nutrient as part of a comprehensive, scientifically balanced formula.

4. Not all beta carotene is created equal; over the years we have learned that most manufacturers use synthetic beta carotene–an extremely cheap and far less effective variety. Natural Beta Carotene, while more expensive, has been shown in some clinical trials to be far superior. The synthetic version was tested on rats in one study, and had not effect on their tumors, but when the same rats were treated with natural beta carotene, some of their tumors disappeared.