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Nutrition - What are the Nutritional Needs?
Nutrition as it applies to our daily lives means that we take in
what we need to maintain our body's healthy state. Nutrition has
become an important word thanks to the involvement of the USDA
in our daily food requirements, and the FDA's involvement in
determining what is and is not dangerous for us to consume.
But what is our responsibility in the nutrition game? Do we
understand what our nutritional requirements are, how to fulfill
those requirements, and how to look for real nutritional value
in our foods?
I'm not sure that nutrition has been successfully addressed in
its own right. We hear nutrition in relation to our vitamin
intake, our fortified cereals and milk, and in the context that
we need "nutritional value" from our food choices. But what
really is nutrition when applied to our daily bodily functions?
Today, we must determine how much nourishment we need, how much
physical exercise we need, and how best to accomplish those
ends. Calorie needs, nutritional needs, physical needs, and
education about those needs now is information we should all
understand, at least as it applies to our individual self.
If you will visit your local doctor, library, or fitness center,
there is massive amounts of information available to help
educate and to help you make good health choices, no matter what
the age group.
Nutrition refers to the nurturing of our body, in our ability to
keep it healthy and functioning as it is supposed to do. Our
ability to provide the body with all it's necessary food,
vitamins, and minerals so that we continue to thrive in our
daily life processes.
If you were to take a cross section of the population, and check
for adequate levels of the most used and fortified vitamins and
minerals, you would probably find that as high as 80% or the
population is lacking in a least one of the vitamins and
minerals.
Now, that doesn't sound too bad, until you stop to think, what
if it's calcium? A calcium deficiency brings on osteoporosis, a
deteriorating of the bone. This disease alone costs millions in
medical expense to the
population.
Can you see how a little more cooperation and open-minded
participation on the part of our medical field could result in
far fewer health problems? It would also have provided the
general population with a viable way to discern their nutrition,
vitamin and mineral needs, accurately.
So how do we determine that we are providing the essential
nutritional needs? That knowledge comes by educating ourselves
about what our individual needs are, the needs of our family,
and then taking that knowledge and applying it to the foods we
buy, that we prepare, and that our families consume.
Quite often, our vitamin and mineral needs outweigh our caloric
needs. In those instances, we turn to manufactured vitamins and
minerals to fill the gap. This is a part of our nutritional
needs, also.
Nutrition is one of the most complex areas to gain useful
knowledge about, because there are so many components, and
because each person has their own individual needs.
Women needs differ from those of men, and older women's needs
differ from those of a young girl. As we age, our needs
constantly change; therefore continual education about nutrition
is a fact of life. The nutritional needs of a cardiac patient
are different than those of a healthy, middle-aged hiker.
Can you see the complexity of the situation now? What we really
need is to develop a scale that determines the nutritional needs
of our bodies on a cellular level, so that as we age, as our
physical condition changes, or our health changes, we can
recalculate our needs, based on cellular changes and content in
our body.
Individuality is the key to understanding each person's
nutritional needs, and then working to educate us is the key to
fulfilling those nutritional needs. Good nutrition should be the
ultimate goal of every person alive.