NATURE

Using Food To Improve And Maintain Health

By Cynthia McFarland

Let’s admit it. We live in a world that is increasingly geared toward instant gratification. Yet for all our apps, tweets, tags and posts, some things still require time and attention to detail. Your health, for example.

In an e ort to maintain and restore health, there’s one key area people tend to ignore: what they eat. You wouldn’t fill the tank of your gasoline-powered vehicle with diesel and expect positive results. Yet many people have poor eating habits and then wonder why they have no energy, are frequently sick or struggle with various health conditions.

Food is fuel. It can also be powerful medicine.

Before you run out to the vitamin store and stock up on supplements, you should know that taking supplements is not the same as eating a balanced, nutritious diet. For example, you may take a calcium supplement for bone health, but the ability of your body to use calcium depends not only on the amount (or dose) provided by a supplement but also the level of vitamin D in your body, your age, whether you took calcium with or without food, as well as your intake of sodium, ca eine and alcohol.

Supplements can provide a false sense of what health is, observes Amy Freeman, RDN, LDN, CDE, a nutritionist and certifi ed diabetes educator who works at Ocala Health’s Senior Wellness Community Center.

“Most clients I work with want to practice good health, but there is a lack of knowledge on how to do this. The marketers of supplements have done a complete job at convincing consumers of their message to buy a supplement or ‘anti-oxidant’ tablet to fill that desire to be healthful,” says Freeman.

Freeman explains that it’s much better to get as much of your nutrients as possible from what you eat.

“The beauty of food when compared to a tablet or capsule or gummy is the elegant arrangement of not just one vitamin or mineral, but numerous vitamins, minerals, fiber types and the wide range of phytochemicals working synergistically to support the metabolism and endogenous anti-oxidant systems,” she notes.