5 Ways to Eat Healthy

We all want to stay healthy but do we actually act for it? Increasingly, it is undeniable that one of the key factory to stay healthy is to eat healthy. There are a lot of misperceptions of healthy eating, i.e. this beverage is low in sugar because i don't feel it it sweet, Im a vegan because it is healthier than eating meat ...etc.  Well, I can tell you above is not 100% correct, read the 5 ways from below to find out why and how can we eat healthier. 

1. No Processed Food/Beverages

Nuggets, sausages, meat balls, fish cakes, carbonated drinks, concentrated juice...  these are all foods that you can see in the supermarket. Why they are there? Because it is 'cheap, easy and tasty'. Im not saying whatever listed above are 100% processed but if you see a sausage has no flaky fiber (cooked meat) in it, then it is almost certain that it is processed food. So why no process food? Because you are not eating/drinking what you paid for. Example: concentrated juice, it is all nothing but approved artificial colourant, juicy flavour and preservative. Well maybe few drops of real juicy (so that they can claim in the packaging "contain real fruit juice"). And these chemicals are all unnecessary by our body and in fact, no good to it, so why we want to buy them when we have choice?

2. Read the Label

We all have taste memory in our mind. Each time we eat, unconsciously we store the taste into our mind. So when we describe something is sweet or not, we will just compare it with the taste memory. That is not very correct and scientific because it is just mere descriptive words. When we buy from supermarket, almost all packaged foods/beverages are labeled. There are possibilities that a beverage contains 11g sugar per 100ml taste less sweet compare to another with just 6g per 100ml. So always read the labels to understand what you are actually buying.  Also in the ingredient list, if you see a lot of component with chemical names, don't buy it. Never buy those with the ingredients that you don't know. 

3. Eat Whole Food

Whole food means it is unprocessed and or maybe processed as little as possible. A very simple way to distinguish the difference between processed and whole food is by the look: If you can't tell what it is on your plate, don't eat it. A chicken nugget should be made of chicken meat not mixture of carcass, skins, flour and other disgusting stuffs. A fruit juice should be just juice as main contain. Whole food is all natural food and not only it means no added chemicals but also it means no harm to our body. 

4. A Balanced Diet

There are 6 major classes of nutrients: carbohydrates, fats, minerals, protein, vitamins, fibers, and water. A balanced diet means you eat all 6 classes in a proportional way. A very simple guide is using the Food Pyramids, i.e. you should more vegetables than meat...etc. But most people think that by eating only vegetable, they will be healthier. Put a side the cooking method, as mentioned, a healthy diet it's a balanced diet. By eating only vegetables, one actually restricts themselves by taking in only certain classes of nutrients and ignore others hence not a balanced diet. Example: Proteins (amino acids) are the building blocks of our body, especially muscle and other body tissues and it is mainly come from meat/poultry, eggs and dairy. Although certain type of vegetable do contains protein like Tofu (soybean product) but its only contains 2.3g of protein every 1 oz. While there are 10g of protein in every 1oz of chicken breast. 

5. Homemade Meals

This is kind of like summary of all above points: We are in control of what to put into our body. It is sort of an ultimate way to ensure the food are at the healthiest level as it can be because and most importantly, we have the option to choose what to be added and what not. And by that way, we can be worry free from preservative, colourant, flavouring and other nasty chemicals. 

Having said all above, maybe one might claims that it is difficult to avoid processed foods and to cook at home in modern life. What i want to share lastly in this post is a classic phrase by a French physiologist in 1826: "Tell me what you eat and i will tell you what you are".