A healthy diet consists of over 30 different nutrients you need to ingest to keep your body not only functioning but also healthy. All these nutrients are contained within these categories: Water, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. Water is required to stave off dehydration and needs to be frequently replenished: 8 glasses per day is the most recommended quantity you need to consume. If you are trying to lose weight even more is recommended. Although foods such as fruits contain water, you should still stick to the recommended 8 glasses. You need the amino acids contained in...

We eat food because we feel hungry and most of the time it tastes good. By eating food we supply the body with energy and all the essential ingredients it needs to keep itself in good health. There are all sorts of foods to eat but for simplicities sake, they are normally broken down into 3 groups. These are carbohydrates, proteins and fats. Briefly, carbohydrates supply energy to the body and proteins help to renew the body’s cells or build new cells. This article will cover the role of fats in nutrition. Let’s face it, fats get a bad rap, generally because we associate eating fat...

We are all different from one another. We have different needs and different ways of responding to things around us. Some of us like to plan our every move and yet there are others who like to go with the flow and are spontaneous. But no matter the category you think you fall in, there are few things that are common to all of us-the most important being the necessity to take full and complete care of our body. You may think that you have got everything under control yet there are a few needs of our own body that escape all of us or they are simply difficult to keep tabs on with our busy schedules. That...

Size portioning in your abs diet is essential to weight and fat loss. This implies that you have a balanced meal throughout the day. The abs diet suggests that you try to regulate your vegetable portions to 4 ounces, which contains roughly 15-25 grams of carbohydrates; fruit servings should be somewhere between two to four ounces, which translates to 30 to 60 grams of carbohydrates. Also include a cup of whole grains in your abs diet, which is roughly eight ounces when cooked or two ounces when dry, or you can just have 2 slices of multigrain bread to make it easier; this intake translates into...

The National Marine Fisheries Service lists China as supplying 70 percent of America’s tilapia. China and Thailand are the largest suppliers of imported shrimp. After traveling over two thousand miles throughout Mainland China and spending five days on the Yangtze River, I have become alarmed at the condition of our imported seafood from Asia. The waterways of China and Hong Kong are so polluted with industrial chemicals, farm effluents, and human waste that seafood exporters must rely on antibiotic treatment just to keep the fish alive. I witnessed several bloated and decaying bodies, both...

If you pay attention to health related issues and news then chances are good you have heard about antioxidants and the many positive benefits they quickly and easily provide you for overall health and well-being. But these statements about your dietary needs for antioxidants to keep you looking young, staying fit and healthy rarely actually get around to telling you what an antioxidant really is and why you need them? Very simply put, an antioxidant is something that prevents or slows down oxidization. This can be very beneficial to the health, for instance the cholesterol in our bodies is not...

The concept of negative calories is a fairly new one and people have mixed feelings about whether it is possible or not. The basic theory given by people who believes it works is that negative calorie food takes more energy to digest the food than the food gives nutritionally. If you had a dessert that contained 300 calories and it took 150 calories to digest it, this would leave 150 calories that would be turned into fat on your body. For an example of the way the suggested negative calorie method works, you may have eaten a food that only contains 100 calories, and it takes 150 calories to digest...

There is so much confusion about exactly what a healthy diet really is these days. Eat carbs or avoid them? What about meat? There are so many fad diets available that it could even confuse a nutritionist. Today let’s look at a healthy diet in general without considering the thought of weight loss. A healthy diet will lead to weight loss and optimum health. In the earliest years of school we all learned about the food pyramids – the most basic steps of healthy eating. Somewhere along the way, we forgot about that pyramid because we embarked upon soda, potato chips, greasy burgers, pizza,...

How you start your day is important. If food is your fuel then why would you run on empty for half the day? FIVE Benefits to Eating Breakfast 1. Breakfast means “breaking the fast.” During the night you are not eating. Breakfast jump starts your system back in to “awake and alive mode.” This gives you energy and helps you think clearly. 2. Eating in the morning speeds up your metabolism. Once you wait over 4 hours your metabolism starts to slow down. When you have a slow metabolic rate the food you eat is more likely to turn in to fat. Your body switches to starvation mode,...

Life today seems to be moving faster and faster; there are always a million things to do, and little or no time to do them. It can be difficult to find the time to prepare healthy meals, and unfortunately, our bodies pay a heavy toll for eating unhealthy foods that are convenient. On top of a poor diet, we have to deal with stress, and the chemicals and pollutants found in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the places we work and live. As you can see, under this heavy barrage of toxins, the human body starts to slow down. So, when we are moving faster and faster, having a body that can’t...