Nowadays, there is a lot of talk about healthy food and the importance of the quality of the products we eat. Fast food and all sorts of options for establishments with simple and not always healthy food are also gaining popularity. What kind of food style should you stick to? Of course, doctors and scientists on the examples of their research prove that healthy food improves health, quality of life and prolongs life.
Let’s figure out together what can be considered a healthy food and how to choose and cook it. How often do we underestimate the role of proper nutrition, prepare food hastily, not paying attention to the selection of products and dishes?
Until now, many people treat vegetables and fruits as “frivolous” food. But the food of plant origin has all the vitamins and minerals necessary for the body, it is low in calories, has an anti-atherosclerotic effect, improves metabolism, normalizes the activity of the gastrointestinal tract.
How is important to eat healthy?
Healthy eating has very simple rules: variety, balance, and a sense of proportion. In other words, the more we eat, the more energy we spend, so everyone needs to increase their physical activity in order to be in harmony with themselves and nature.
Medical research has proven the impact of nutrition on life expectancy and longevity. The conditions of longevity were formulated by the ancient ones: eat less, move more, and always be in a good mood. Healthy eating is the key to health, strength and beauty. Our health, the presence or absence of diseases, and life expectancy largely depend on proper nutrition.
How to choose healthy products?
There is one simple way to divide products into different groups depending on their benefits and the amount that is useful for a person, it’s the healthy food pyramid. At the heart of the food pyramid are the most useful products on which the diet should be based. Above the main level, there are three more floors, which gradually narrow as the use of products in the human diet decreases. The foundation of the pyramid, and as a result, the basis for our health is vegetables and fruits. After all, it is in vegetables and fruits that the greatest amount of vitamins and trace elements is contained. These foods are low in calories and contain the optimal amount of energy. On the second floor of the pyramid, grains and cereals with a rich fibre content have settled in. It also includes potatoes, pasta made from durum wheat and unpeeled rice. Fibre and starch, which are abundant in these foods, promote healthy digestion.
On the third floor, there are products with high protein content. This category can be divided into two parts. The first is dairy and fermented milk products. The second is animal proteins as meat and eggs, vegetable proteins as legumes, and seafood.
The top of the pyramid was headed by the so-called flavourings and seasonings: garlic, aromatic herbs, avocado, olives, pepper and nuts.
How and what to cook healthy?
The food should be varied, freshly prepared. Food that has been repeatedly warmed up and left in the refrigerator for several days loses its useful properties. It’s unacceptable to digest, overcook food. The burnt crust will harm your health. It is necessary to pay attention to the quality of water. In order to understand how to cook and eat healthily, you need to turn again to the pyramid of healthy food.
The basic principle of healthy eating based on the pyramid is the following rule: daily you need to eat food from all four floors. Vegetables and fruits should make up half of the daily diet, the total of products from other sectors of the pyramid will make up the second half, which is 25% cereals, 20% milk, meat, fish, 5% are supplements.
It’s recommended to eat from 7 to 11 servings of vegetables and fruits daily. Ideally, a healthy daily diet should contain foods of all colours of the rainbow, that is, add green cucumber and yellow pepper to the red tomato, make a rainbow and healthy salad.
What is unhealthy eating?
One of the unhealthiest is fast food and all frying products – sandwiches, hamburgers, French fries and fried chickens. It is also advisable to avoid all salty, refined vegetable oils, sugar and all products containing it, table vinegar, spices. Canned food, especially meat and fish, smoked products, hydrogenated fats, sauces, fizzy drinks, and almost all carbonated drinks, many confectionery products are also unhealthy food. This food is too heavy for our body to digest and therefore leads to the occurrence of diseases and weight gain.
To exclude unhealthy food is quite simple: you need to try to reduce the amount of fried food, refuse canned food and semi-finished products, as well as carbonated drinks. Remember that a lot of coffee is also not good for you. It is necessary to control the quality and quantity of any food and drinks that you consume daily. Keep a balanced diet in mind and combine foods from each floor of the healthy food pyramid.