Personal Health Risk Assessment
Nutrition
Understanding nutrition is today very complex and yet good nutrition is the key to good health and poor nutrition is a significant underlying causative factor in many diseases, including mental health problems.
The average person is very confused about the range of different messages such as:
- Are carbs bad for or good for you?
- Should you count calories or not?
- What about the GI diet (Glycaemic Index)?
- What is GL (Glycaemic Load)?
- Is the Atkins diet good or bad?
- Etc.,
Achieving good nutritional balance is not easy although many commercial diet producers would have us believe that this is the case. We are all very different and have different lifestyles and good nutrition has to be based on what is right for us given our gender, age, work, environment in which we work and live and our level of physical activity.
There are some basic principles to follow which will help simplify the science behind good nutrition:
- Do not eat any form of processed foods
- Eat at least five portions of seasonal fruits and vegetables
- Eat organic wherever possible
- Reduce animal fats such as beef, pork, bacon etc.
- Do not fry foods
- Eat good fats such as those that come from nuts, seeds, avocados, olives
- Use organic butter not processed spreads but in moderation
- Use semi-skimmed or whole milk again organic
- Reduce your sugar intake and especially from cakes, pastries, sweets
- Reduce your reliance on take-away foods
- Organic Free Range Eggs are fine in moderation
- If you eat bread always eat wholegrain and organic
- Eat potatoes baked or boiled and in moderation – sweet potatoes and yams are good
- Alcohol should be enjoyed in moderation (less than 14 units for women and 21 units for men per week)
- Do not smoke
- Do not take drugs
- Eat 5-6 meals a day, smaller than your regular 3 square a day (take your daily requirements divide by 5-6)
- Always eat breakfast
- Try to taper the size of your meals over the day so that they become smaller as the day goes on as you need the majority of your energy at the start of the day and we tend to reduce our activities as the day progresses
- Remember the old adage: Breakfast like a King, Lunch like a peasant, Dine like a pauper
