Boost Your Nutrition

Can you give your nutrition a boost?   Kaiser Permanente recently had an article, 4 Easy Ways to Boost Your Nutrition.  Their focus is on easy ways to healthier eating and controlling your weight.

1. Food is Fuel – to have energy for your everyday activities and for any workout, food is your fuel.  But not just any fuel, focus on fueling your body with high quality fuel.
2. At Least 1 fruit or vegetable per meal – yes, 5 A Day is the goal but if you’re not even meeting that, at least start with always having a fruit or vegetable with every meal.  Packing your lunch, your kids lunch – make sure you add some fruit or a vegetable.  A piece of fresh fruit is easy to pack, baby carrots and hummus, green or red pepper strips.  So many great choices.  Fruits and vegetables not only add important vitamins, minerals and antioxidants to your day, they help fill you up for few calories.
3. Drink more water.   A recent study found that kids aren’t drinking enough water.  Dr. Oz and Rozien have stated, “over half of U.S kids and teens are dehydrated.”  (Parents:  Just add water)  Serving milk at meals adds water as milk has water in it.  Between meals and at snack time, water is a good choice.   Summer is on its way and a good time to ensure everyone, adults, kids are getting enough water each day.  Water can help stave off hunger and fill you up.  If you are thirsty, your body is telling you to drink more water.
4. Limit the fat, limit the added sugar – Americans love their fried and high sugar foods.   But these are not the healthier choices.  As Kaiser recommends, “Avoid foods with high amounts of fat, sugar and salt.”   They note these foods help trigger your brain to eat more.  Who can stop at one potato chip, one piece of candy?  Also note, the focus is on added sugar, not the sugar naturally present in fruit, milk, juice.  Kaiser quotes the former FDA commissioner as saying the high fat, high sugar and/or high salt foods cause, “conditioned hypereating”.  You may not even be hungry but can overeat these foods.  He noted “hyper” because we eat more of these foods than we need to. 

So 4 simple, and easy to implement nutrition boosts to help celebrate National Nutrition Month. 

Sources:  4 Easy Ways to Boost Your Nutrition, Parents:  Just add water  Image source:  Water