Nutrition
A healthy eating plan
Proper nutrition is a very critical part of health and development that many of us struggle to keep up with. Good nutrition intake is essential to keeping current and future generations healthy across the lifespan. By dropping the amounts of processed foods you consume and picking up an eating style that obtains more natural raw foods, you can help manage your health and wellness.
Breaking free from the western (SAD) diet can be difficult. However, it can be done by adding an array of colors to your plate like fruits, vegetables, and herbs that can load your body with natural essential nutrients . By picking up a plant based diet, many people find themselves enjoying the many benefits of the food. These benefits include weight loss, increase in energy and mindfulness, a decrease in muscle/joint pain, healthy skin, inflammation decrease, and disease and disorder prevention/ reversal.
A Healthy Eating Plan
eating organic products
When consuming natural foods, you are doing more than feeding yourself and preparing a meal. You are creating medicine that is alive and electric for your body. Below are a few ways how you can improve your health:
-Include fruits, vegetables, and whole grains daily.
-Remove dairy products. If this is difficult, try to transition into fat-free or low-fat dairy products.
-Include a variety of protein foods such as legumes (beans and peas), nuts, seeds, and leafy greens.
- Check labels for added sugars, sodium, saturated fats, trans fats, and cholesterol.
-Cut back on your portions and try to consume the recommended serving size. (This will be difficult but if you stick with it the results will show!)
- Remove processed and fried foods.
Enjoy A Healthy Life
Affordability
As you may know, many organic goods cost more than what conventional goods do. ~40% more. With non-organic products sitting right next to an organic product, many of us grab the least expensive option so that we have more money left in our pocket. However, our health does not have to be put on the line due to cost.
Buying and eating organic does not have to be expensive! Below are a few tips on how anyone can begin to include organic into their diet without overspending.
Establish a grocery budget
Budgets aren’t the enemy – they’re simple guidelines to help you stay within your financial means. Budgets allow you to freely spend (within your allotted amount), help you determine needs over wants, and encourage you to upgrade to better food selections wisely. Creating a list helps stay in budget.
Define Real Food
Real food is unaltered one-ingredient foods that come from Earth. Real foods that require minimal processing. However, organic processed foods are now filling shelfs. Just because something is labeled organic does not mean it is natural. Many processed organic foods may not be 100% defined as real food due to man made ingredients. Make sure to read ingredient labels, price check, and look up ingredients you are not familiar with. You will find processed foods also tend to be higher than organic produce.
Know Your Options
Many different stores offer organic produce and goods that vary among prices. This introduces the opportunity to buy foods you enjoy at affordable prices. You can also benefit from lower cost by buying from local markets.. Websites like LocalHarvest and Farmish gives you access to local farms and markets. There are also online grocery shopping apps that allow you to get fresh natural organic produce delivered to your door that has started to become sourced more locally.
The American health association (AHA) recommends 24g of sugar per day for women and 36g per day for men. However, there is no nutritional need or benefit that comes from eating added sugar.
Organic products have been seen to help reduce public health risks to farm workers, their families, and consumers by minimizing the exposure of toxic and persistent chemicals on the farm, in food, in soil, the air, and water supply. Organic foods also helps reduce public health risks, with evidence showing food grown organically is richer in nutrients with less exposure to nitrates and pesticide residues compared to conventionally grown products.
While proving health benefits of eating a particular food is a complex question to answer, evidence is mounting that there are some healthier nutritional profiles linked to consuming various organic products. For instance, a research article published in the journal Food Chemistry found organic soybeans have a healthier nutritional profile from conventionally grown or genetically modified Roundup Ready soybeans! We recommend buying organic foods over non-organic to help contribute to the improvement of your health, wellness, and environment.
Further Resources
added sugars in your diet
To reduce the added sugars in your diet, try these tips:
Drink water, other calorie-free drinks instead of sugary sodas, sports drinks, coffees.
When you drink fruit juice, make sure it's 100% fruit juice — not juice from concentrate that has added sugars and is pasteurized..
Remove breakfast cereals.
Opt for natural varieties of syrups, jams, jellies and preserves.
Choose fresh fruit for dessert instead of cakes, cookies, pies, ice cream and other sweets.
Do not buy canned fruit.
Choose nutrient-rich snacks such as vegetables, fruit, or herbal teas
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) ranks pesticide contamination of 47 popular fruit and veggies based on 35,200 samples tested by the US Department of Agriculture and the FDA. List updated every year.
