Nutrition
This is a printable pdf of the Place Corps guide to health and wellness.
Healthy Eating: A healthy diet is one which is consistent, nutrient rich, and moderate in proportion. This means that it includes vegetables, fruits, proteins, grains, dairy and sugar, in combinations and proportions which help fuel you efficiently: this means more proteins and vegetables than sugar and grain.
Eating healthy is also about having good routines, This means:
◇ eating three meals a day at consistent times
◇ eating with decorum, meaning by cooking or preparing meals ◇ eating happily, meaning with confidence knowing that you are nourishing yourself well and you can count on yourself and your habits to do so.
The best food is almost always eaten with friends or family, so it is good to have this every week, and ideally for at least one meal a day.
Protein:
Protein is an essential form of nutrient which is made of amino acids, these help to build things like your bones, muscles, hair, skin and more. We all need to eat a certain amount of protein each day, but that can vary based on our size, age, and physical activity level.
◇ The official standard is that 10-35% of our calories should come from protein each day. Protein should be a part of each meal you eat.
◇ Protein can come from many sources from animal meat, to dairy, to beans, and in smaller concentrations through grains as well.
Protein and the Environment: Different sources of protein require a different amount of resources to cultivate, and exert a different impact on the environment. Beef has a very high impact on our environment, while rice and beans have a very low impact.
◇ Going forward, it will be important to be mindful of how our eating habits fit into larger environmental concerns, and to develop practices of limiting our beef and dairy consumption and incorporating lower impact proteins into our weekly eating habits.
Fiber:
Fiber is a nutrient derived from plants, and it can be found in fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and grain based foods. Fiber helps your body to digest food and to fill you up when you eat. Fiber should be a part of every meal that you eat.
◇ Fiber helps to keep our microbiome healthy, these are the many bacteria that help us to break down food efficiently.
Whole Grains vs. Refined Grains: Whole grains are not over processed which means that they retain nutrients, while refined grains are very processed and are stripped of nutrients and often have added sugars.
Examples of whole grains include: oats, quinoa, wild rice, brown rice,
barley, corn, bulgar, and more.
There are two kinds of fats; saturated and unsaturated.
Unsaturated fats are those which are primarily derived from plants. They include: olive oil, avocado, peanut oil, almonds, pecans, walnuts, soybeans and more.
◇ 8-15% of our daily calories should come from unsaturated fats. Saturated fats largely come from animal products but can also come
from coconuts and coconut oil, and palm oil.
◇ Foods like beef, cheese, ice cream, butter, cookies, pizza and fast food are major sources of saturated fat. These foods should make up for less than 7% of daily calories.
Sugar should make up for 8% or less of your calories each day. Excess sugar intake leads to weight gain, high blood pressure, inflammation, diabetes, heart attack and stroke, and is a major issue in this country.
The suggested standard from the American Heart Association is that women should consume no more than 100 calories of sugar a day, and men 150. That means about 1 soda.
Breakfast is a good way to set yourself up for the day, the best breakfast is high in quality protein such as yogurt, eggs, or nuts.
◇ Eating breakfast is a way to set your eating schedule, so that you are able to eat lunch around noon, and dinner around 6 without issue. Without breakfast you are more likely to have an inconsistent eating schedule and reach for easier but lower quality forms of calories.
Breakfast also jumpstarts your metabolism each day: by eating breakfast you put your body into motion breaking down and processing fuel efficiently: the more efficiently your body processes calories, the less calories are converted to fat.
A processed food is any food which has been altered in the process of becoming a commodity, this can range from freezing, to canning, to baking, to drying and more. Many of these processes strip the food of nutrients and increase sugars and saturated fats.
However, some processed foods are good, such as frozen fruit and vegetables, which have neither been stripped of nutrients or increased in sugar or fat, but have simply been frozen and packaged.
◇ Canned food can also be nutritious and a more affordable way for people to access fruits and vegetables.
◇ The way to know if your food has a lot of additives from being processed is to check the ingredient list, the more ingredients listed, and the more technical the words in the list, the more processed the food item is.
Unhealthy processed foods include: deli meat, packaged chips, crackers, and cookies, most cereals, canned soups, sweetened and flavored yogurts, soft drinks, sweetened beverage slike coffee and tea, energy drinks, instant pasta, noodles, oatmeals, and more.
A serving size is a standard amount of food selected based on a 2000 calorie diet and certain standards set by the national institute of health. This is meant to indicate what is generally a healthy, reasonable, or acceptable amount of an average person.
However, people vary in size, age, activity level, and bodily needs
and therefore require very different amounts of calories each day. A
professional athlete may need up to 5000 calories a day, while a
small woman may only need 1500.
◇ A portion size is the amount of food you choose to eat based on your dietary needs, taking into account your height, activity level, age, gender, health, and other bodily concerns.
◇ A good way to understand your proportions when eating is to use a plate and eat slowly, this way you can see what you are eating and how it fits together.
Food Groups and Portions: Generally a meal should include a certain percentage from each major food group: fruit, vegetables, grains, protein, and dairy.
Eating a Varied Diet: This means eating a wide range of foods and meals, rather than eating the same three meals every day. This is a good way to ensure that you are getting a range of nutrients, and that your gut biome is healthy and therefore able to process food well. Eating a varied diet is natural for our bodies, and can simply mean eating with the seasons, based on what is naturally grown and naturally available in a given season.
Flexitarianism:
This is a form of sustainably minded eating in which consumers seek to minimize the amount of animal products they consume while not eliminating meat and dairy altogether.
◇ Flexitarian eaters make up an increasing percentage of the population, although the rates of vegetarian and vegan consumers are relatively stable. Most flexitarians intend to steadily reduce the amount of meat and animal products they consume over time.
◇ Taking into account the sustainability and environmental impact of your eating habits is also a way to address community health, because our habits of consumption affect the conditions of our places.
Sustainable eating is a way of eating in which a consumer takes into consideration the environmental impact of various food sources when making choices about what and how to eat.
Food takes resources to be cultivated whether meat, dairy, fruit, vegetables or grains, and it also exerts an impact on the environment. Beef, for example, is responsible for significant changes in our atmosphere due to cow farts.
Meat: meat takes the most amount of energy to produce and also exerts a significant impact on the environment, therefore the more sustainable choice would be to minimize meat consumption.
Plants: Plants require a much lower amount of resources to produce, therefore they are a more sustainable choice and should play a much larger role in our diets than meat.
Transportation: It is essential to consider where your food is coming from and whether it is in season as this will tell you how much energy it requires to get your food from production to the grocery store to your house.
◇ The most sustainable foods will be those which are in season and are local or relatively local, which means that there is less energy used to transport the food, and to cultivate it unnaturally, or out of season.
Understanding how to make sustainable and healthy eating choices through the food resources in your area, from grocery stores, to farmers markets, to local farm stores, the YMCA Farm stand, your own garden, and more.
◇ composting your unused food and converting it into soil in order to return it to the growing process is another way of making your eating habits more sustainable.
Mindful Eating:
Mindful eating is the practice of slowing down the process of eating in order to ask yourself important questions about how you feel, what you need, and when to stop.
◇ Mindful eating is practice of how you buy, cook, and consume food, as well as how often and much you consume.
◇ It is more or less getting in touch with what your body is asking for, and being able to respond appropriately to this – and this can be a challenge in a country in which the kind of food that is popular and eating conventions are very disconnected from the nutrition, proportion and interval of food we need to be okay.
Hydration:
Water is to our bodies what oil is to a car: it helps us run efficiently, smoothly and comfortably. Drinking water helps our bodies regulate temperature, lubricate our joints, aid in digestion, eliminate bodily waste through sweat, urination and bowel movements, helps us think and much more.
◇ When we are in hotter climates we must drink more fluids.
◇ When we are physically active we must drink more fluids.
◇ When we are sick we must drink more fluids.
The best way to stay hydrated is simply to carry a large water bottle and sip water throughout the day. One way to make sure you are drinking is to connect it with other activities, such as eating: before having a meal drink a glass of water, and at the end of the meal, have another glass, for example.
* It is important to be wary of caloric drinks as well as drinks
labeled as diets, as these tend to include added sugar or sugar
substitutes which our body does not process well, and which are high
in calories and low in nutritional value. Drinking calories is a good
way to consume calories while not actually satisfying your hunger
cravings. *
How much water to drink a day:
It is recommended that men consume 3 liters, or 13 cups, of water a day, and that women consume 2 liters, or 9 cups a day. However, what your body needs is likely something more specific to your size, activity levels, and the climate in which you live, and will vary.
To find out how much water you need, keep track of how much you are drinking, how your body feels, and the color of your urine: this will tell you just how much you need.