A
healthy diet includes the right amounts of macronutrients and micronutrients. Included
in a healthy diet are adequate amounts of water and physical activity. To
start, macronutrients are your fats, carbohydrates, and proteins. They are
digested and absorbed through the stomach and intestines to be turned into
nutrients the body needs. Physical activity helps encourage health and longer
lives by strengthening the immune system, strengthening heart muscles and
arteries, and lastly, by promoting lean, healthy body composition (Sizer &
Whitney, 2011).
The challenge that is associated
with choosing the right foods can depend upon availability, affordability, and
nutritional education. If a person lives where food products are few and far
between, possibly more rural areas, then they cannot always choose the right
foods if they are not available. In addition, if prices are not affordable many
people will opt for cheaper food product which tends to be high-calorie and
full of fat. Nutritional education would be the knowledge one has about
nutrition (i.e. choosing the right foods) and the fact that if someone has not
been educated they are not likely to choose the right foods.
To conclude this blog and part of
the final, I would like to discuss my personal choices in the right foods and
even the wrong foods because of the education or lack thereof I have received.
I guess now I can’t say that I have chosen the wrong foods because of
education, rather motivation. Prior to these classes I was unaware of the risk
factors associated with nutrition Anyway, I am in my second nutrition class
because of my curiosity and concern about my health. Now I have knowledge and
fear so to speak which allows me to want to choose the right foods. Plus, you
feel better when you eat healthy versus all of that processed food out there.
Erin Christine Dorn