Ever since the day you were born, everything that you do is directly or indirectly linked to ensuring your wellbeing. On the most basic level, you work to make money to be able to afford food and drink for sustenance. The essence of our existence is solely based on our ability as human beings to look after our health to survive. However, it is rather surprising that we have willingly gone astray and chosen to silence our innate need to protect our health.
Healthy people in today’s world are considered to be the exception to the rule, the rest on the other hand have submitted to poor diets and unhealthy habits. If you identify with the latter group, there is still a silver lining, your body is more resilient than you can imagine. Starting with something as simple as rethinking your food choices can be enough to restore your health. Below, we will discuss what foods to avoid and what to eat more of to put you on the road to a healthier you:
Foods to Eat
There is a common misconception that healthy food is bland and boring. This cannot be farther from the truth. For one, healthy food comes in numerous varieties that you can’t group them under one category. It’s important that you learn more and more about what is deemed to be healthy. With time, science has been able to give us better insight into how different food can benefit our bodies and the properties that do so.
Fruits and Vegetables
When you eat fresh fruits and vegetables you give your body the vitamins and minerals that can help it carry out its functions in a better way. Potassium that you get from bananas, potatoes, and tomatoes helps your body maintain healthy blood pressure.
Vitamin C found in citrus fruits and berries supports your immune system to be able to fend off diseases. While fiber that you get from leafy greens and apples supports your digestive system and reduces your risk of heart diseases. These are just a few examples of how increasing your intake of fruits and vegetables can improve and protect your health.
Fermented Foods
Fermented foods are an excellent source of probiotics that help the good bacteria in your gut to grow and flourish. This useful gut bacteria fight off microbes that cause inflammation in the gut wall, compromising the health of both your digestive and immune systems.
Foods like kimchi, sauerkraut, and kombucha are rich in probiotics. However, if you are not a fan of these distinctive flavors, you can turn to dietary supplements. Health and diet experts at BestHealth.org compare several probiotics-rich supplements in full detail to help you take your pick. It is recommended to carry out some tests to rule out food allergies before you introduce any new foods to your diet. Once you start noticing the difference in your overall health, you won’t be able to go back to ignoring probiotics.
Foods to Avoid
Generally speaking, there is no such thing as “bad food”. However, there are bad ways of preparing food that takes away from their nutritional value and makes them work against your body instead of with it. We have to understand that no company will blatantly state that the food they are producing can harm your body.
This is why you need to become better informed to understand which ingredients and chemicals are harmful, and how they can do that. It’s important to learn how to balance between healthy and non-healthy food and see if you can take the unhealthy out of your diet altogether.
Here are some examples:
Highly Processed Foods
Food manufacturers figured out long ago that increasing the shelf life of the food they produce can save them tons of money. This is practical for business, and it is also practical for a lot of people. Whether it’s because they’re too busy to cook, going on a camping trip, or even to save money at any given time.
While this was absolutely brilliant for businesses, for your health though, not so much. Highly processed foods are loaded with chemical additives, salt and sugar to make the food safe for consumption. Frozen dinners, microwave popcorn, and instant ramen are all examples of highly processed foods that you are better off avoiding.
Deep-Fried Foods
Deep frying is a great example of taking perfectly healthy food and turning it into a food menace that can increase your risk of many diseases. Although deep-frying the chicken and fries at home is still problematic, it is still much better than eating from fast-food restaurants where you cannot possibly tell if/when they are changing the oil they cook with. Studies found that when oil is reused for frying, its trans-fat content increases. Unsaturated fats found in vegetable oils that are typically used for deep frying transforms into trans fats when overheated, which have been associated with heart disease, cancer, and obesity.
Choosing the right foods is one of the few ways that you have full control over when it comes to maintaining your health. By referring to the information provided here, now you have better insight to make more calculated decisions when it comes to your diet, and what it is you should take more of, and what to avoid entirely.
However, you cannot expect to undo years of poor diet in a matter of months. Start with simple swaps that you can manage without feeling like you are punishing your body or depriving it of the food it enjoys and craves. Over time, healthy eating will become second nature to you that you won’t even have to give it much thought.
If you’re able to pair a healthy diet with an active lifestyle, you’ll find that the two certainly go hand in hand, and you will definitely feel the changes, inside and out. So make it a point to take that step to know more and changing more for the betterment of your health.
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