Over the course of a lifetime, our bodies track our dietary patterns, physical activity, seasons of happiness, grief, and everything in between.
Did you know assessing the foods you are consuming is important to your overall health and wellness?
Did You Know: Education Is Key?
Many Americans do not have a full understanding of what they’re eating and how certain foods affect overall health.
A recent GreenChef survey found 54% of Americans don’t understand more than half of a nutrition label. Further, participants in the survey associated phrases such as “low-fat” (49%), “low calories” (47%) and“veggie-forward” (36%) as being healthy, SWNS Digital reported.
Further, the National Association of Community Health Centers’ report “Closing the Primary Care Gap,” showed more than 100 million Americans don’t have a primary care provider.
The lack of nutritional and dietary education coupled with the issue of people neglecting regular visits to the doctor can ultimately create a recipe for serious health implications.
While understanding how to manage a proper diet presents its challenges, there are quick hacks to learning how to gauge the nutritional value of the foods we consume for a more balanced health and lifestyle.
- Avoid high levels of sodium in your diet, which typically show through a rise in blood pressure, swollen feet or hands, and increased thirst.
- Assess the ratio of the food groups on your plate. Dieticians recommend filling half of a dinner plate with non-starchy vegetables, a quarter filled with carbohydrates such as starchy vegetables or brown rice, and the last quarter composed of lean protein.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends a diet with low added sugar, high fiber, and low refined carbohydrate intake. Large amounts of added sugar provide no nutritional benefits.
Did You Know: Environment Impacts Diet and Nutrition Choices?
In 2023, the Capital Area Food Bank’s Hunger Report cited that 32% of the District’s population experienced food insecurity at some point between May 2022 and April 2023, compared with 33% the year prior?
While District residents experience food insecurity within every quadrant across the city, a large number of African American families residing East of the River are particularly living in a food desert.
“They don’t give the people in Southeast good, quality foods. Simple as that,” Jay Clark told The Informer in September 2023.
Without a lack of full service grocery stores, corner markets filled with highly processed foods in conjunction with socioeconomic and transportation barriers encourage negative health outcomes.
Did You Know: What We Eat Affects Our Moods?
There’s a relationship to what we eat and how we feel- both physically and mentally.
The National Library of Medicine reports poor nutrition may be a significant factor in the experience of experiencing sad or bad moods. However, improving diet can help to protect the state of one’s physical and mental health.
According to Harvard Health, 95% of the body’s “serotonin,” a neurotransmitter that helps regulate sleep and appetite, inhibits pain and mediate moods, is produced in the gastrointestinal tract, showing the correlation of what we eat and how we feel. For this reason, eating healthy foods can influence mental health and overall wellness.
“Epidemiological research has observed that…high consumption of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes; moderate consumption of poultry, eggs, and dairy products; and only occasional consumption of red meat – is associated with a reduced risk of depression,” according to NIH.
Studies show that high consumption of processed carbohydrates not only increase the risk of diabetes and obesity, but they could increase the risk of anxiety and depression, particularly through rapid and repeated increases and decreases in blood glucose.
Did You Know: Trans Fats are a Killer?
Beware of trans fats.
“Trans fat intake is responsible for up to 500,000 premature deaths from coronary heart disease each year around the world,” according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Trans fats significantly increase the risk for stroke, cancer, insulin resistance, Type 2 diabetes, heart attack, inflammation, infertility, and even tendon and bone degeneration.
Hydrogenated oils, used to enhance flavor and increase shelf life of products, often contain a lot of trans fats, such as: butter, sticks of margarine, microwave popcorn, fried foods, shortening, non-dairy coffee creamer, crisco oil, and commercial baked goods.
The most pressing danger of trans fats are their ability to clog the arteries, greatly increasing the risk of heart attacks and death. Most heart problems stem from inflammation inside of the arteries.
