The declining quality of our diets
Eating a balanced and
healthy diet seems to be getting more difficult in the 21st Century. Your body needs lots of ‘bang’ for its
nutritional ‘bucks’ and this means eating the best quality food you can. Choose
fresh food where possible: if food comes in a plastic wrapper and you need a degree in food science to understand the label, be suspicious! Many things influence our ability to get the best from our food:
Intensive farming:
- Soil changes: Comparisons of UK and USA nutrition tables suggest that common foods might be providing us with up to half the vitamins and minerals compared to 50 years ago. There is concern that overexploiting soil with intensive farming methods is a core problem. Selenium intake has dropped by 50% in the last 20 years due to sourcing wheat from low selenium areas.
- Fatty acids: Free range animals or chicken eggs provide significantly higher proportions of Omega-3 Fatty Acids (the ‘fish oil family’) and a lower proportion of saturated fatty acids than intensively-farmed animals. But the meat in most diets tends to come from the latter. Additionally, our consumption of fish has dropped by 50% in 60 years and this is having dramatic consequences on the intake of Omega-3 Fatty Acids in the diet.
Lifestyle:
- A gut feeling: Modern life is stressful! To deal with the effects of stress, your body redirects valuable energy away from digestion causing a reduction in nutrient absorption. You can improve your digestive health by eating high quality food and chewing it slowly, as well as taking friendly bacteria supplements containing ‘bifidobacteria.’
- A little of what you fancy? Avoid tea or coffee immediately after meals: Tea halves Iron uptake and coffee lowers uptake of Magnesium and B-Vitamins. A better option is to choose a mint tea to calm digestion. Similarly alcohol severely depletes B-Vitamins, and many common drugs interfere with nutrient uptake read more
