Food and Health

Today, food is an issue that arouses controversy and that is on everyone's lips. The spectacular advances that have experienced food science and nutrition in recent decades show the importance of conducting adequate food as one of the best ways of promoting health and physical and emotional wellbeing. The discovery of nutrients and their functions within our agency allows us to know fully many of the properties of foods until relatively few years, sensed or were part of popular wisdom.

Scientific advances bring us deep into the world of food and in relation to eating habits to maintain health. Every study, every investigation, we reaffirmed that the idea that proper diet is one that takes into account all the conditions that characterize us as people educated in a specific culture with specific eating habits, tastes, health, customs and ideals, physical activity and different lifestyles.Therefore, there is no ideal diet used throughout the world, but a universal standard as to the type of foods should be consumed within the daily diet, which on the one hand ensures that cover the energy and nutrient needs of all the people that make up a healthy population, and secondly, helps in the prevention of certain disorders and diseases related to poor nutrition.

A good diet, varied and complete, balanced diet whose best known model is the Mediterranean diet, on the one hand allows our body to function normally (that meets our basic biological needs-we need to eat to live ") and secondly, it prevents or at least reduces the risk of certain disorders or diseases in the short and long term. Just remember the impact they have on our society calls "diseases of civilization": hypertension, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, eating disorders and even certain cancers are related to an unbalanced diet. There is usually a direct cause and effect, but it is one factor that contributes to the risk of emergence and development of such diseases.

The current research focuses not only on the consumption of energy and nutrients (proteins, fats and carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and water), but also in other non-nutritive components of foods (it has been proven in scientific experiments and in laboratory studies) behave as protective factors against these diseases and others, speak specifically of the fiber and natural antioxidants, present mainly in plants


WHAT DOES THE TERM "balanced diet"?
Balanced diet is one that contains a sufficient variety of foods in adequate amounts, depending on the individual characteristics (age and physiological state-childhood growth spurt, pregnancy and lactation, sex, body composition and complexion ...) and lifestyle (active, sedentary ...), and guarantees that meet the requirements for energy and nutrients that our body needs to maintain good nutritional status, health and welfare.


What do we NUTRIENTS?
Substances are usable by our bodies that make life possible and which are found in foods unevenly distributed: carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins and minerals. The water and fiber are not fed, but they play an important role for the proper functioning of our body. The nutrients met the following functions:
Getting the energy to perform vital functions (heart pumping, breathing, maintaining body temperature ...) and the development of overall activity.
- Carbohydrates: simple (sugars) and complex (starch)
- Fats and lipids
To build and maintain organs, tissues, and our system of defenses against external agents and infections
- Protein complete (animal) and incomplete (plant)
REGULAR all processes occurring in our body so that everything runs in full harmony
- Vitamins (water soluble B-group and C-and soluble-A, D, E, K) and minerals

FOOD NOT TO BE MISSED NEVER IN OUR BUREAU
The nutrients are not uniformly distributed in foods. In each of them, therefore, dominated either nutrient. This has led to classify them into different groups according to their affinity or nutritious main role in our body the nutrients in each food predominant.

Foods that belong to the same group may be interchangeable, always in the right quantities, as they share similar nutritional properties. This allows us to vary much diet without changing significantly the nutritional composition of the daily diet. We must not forget that in some groups there are differences in terms of fat and sugar (or full-fat dairy, lean meat or fat, or sugar-sweetened yogurt ...), which translates to a greater or lesser number of calories.


BUT WHAT IS A SERVING?
The quantities or types of food rations and to consume depends on the calorie needs of each person. As an example, follows normocaloric diet of 2,200 kilocalories per day, valid for an adult weighing about 70 kilos of carrying out moderate physical activity (sedentary job but does exercise-walking for an hour every day ).


Food group Number of servings per day 1 serving is. .........
Milk and milk or 2 1 cup milk or 1 cup fresh cheese or, 2 yoghurts or 2 petit suisses or 100 g curd cheese or 80 g fresh or 40 g low fat cheese or 2 quesitos ...
Meat, fish eggs and 2 1 fillet or 2 wheels or 2 eggs (unos120-150 g / serving)
3.4 slices of cold meat or ham ...
Grain Starch (potato) Minimum Pulses, 6 1 slice bread (4 fingers thick) or 4 toast or rusks
2 / 3 cereal bowl or 6 cookies marie
1 pot of rice soup, pasta or cooked vegetables
2 potatoes the size of an egg

Vegetables 2-4 1 bowl or salad plate
1 dish of cooked vegetables
Fresh fruit 1 or more pieces to size or 1 cup of unsweetened juice
Oils and fats 4-5 1 tablespoon olive oil or seeds
Margarine or butter 1 serving
1 tablespoon mayonnaise ...

Basic Notions
Part of the current research in relation to health and nutrition focuses on non-nutritive compounds in foods and their protective effect on health: fiber and natural antioxidants.
Dietary fiber was discarded for many years by specialists in Human Nutrition. However, in the last two decades there has been a surprising appreciation of their importance to health. The various types of fiber can be divided into two broad categories: insoluble and soluble in water to form viscous gels. Foods rich in fiber increases satiety (makes the person feel "full" and that the gastric emptying time is greater, so that delays hunger pangs after a meal), which is beneficial for people who are obese. And what is more important, a diet low in fiber causes constipation and intestinal tract compression. This has been associated with the development of colonic diverticular disease, hiatal hernia, haemorrhoids and varicose veins.

The fiber and prevention
All these diseases are more common in people who eat little fiber. That is, fiber-rich diets are preventative. They also reduce cholesterol and the risk of heart disease.
Bile salts are formed in the liver from cholesterol. Are secreted about 30 grams of it daily in the bile. Most of these salts are reabsorbed and recycled. The fiber carries a portion of these sales (and the same cholesterol, which also is secreted in bile) to be excreted through the feces rather than being absorbed, causing them to use more cholesterol to synthesize bile salts. The same effect also reduces the risk of gallstones, since a high-fiber diet results in more cholesterol and less bile salts present in bile. The insolubility of cholesterol when present in high concentrations in bile causes gallstones. Bile salts have also been linked with the development of large bowel cancer. If mixed with fiber instead of being in free solution can not affect the intestinal wall to stimulate tumor development.

Dietary fiber exerts two significant effects in reducing cancer risk. All diets contain potentially carcinogenic compounds (which can cause cancer) that when mixed with the fiber can no longer be reabsorbed into the body, and therefore can not affect intestinal cells. Furthermore, gut bacteria ferment a portion of dietary fiber and some of the products of this bacterial metabolism (especially butyric acid) provide an antiproliferative action, help to prevent cells from dividing so they provide greater protection against the development of bowel cancer.

Soluble fiber is also beneficial in the treatment of diabetes mellitus, as it slows the absorption of carbohydrates in the diet, avoiding abrupt elevations in blood glucose after meals: foods rich in soluble fibers taken together with foods containing rapidly absorbed sugars reduce the overall rate of absorption of sugars from food, and therefore can include a greater variety of foods in the diabetic diet.

The goodness of natural antioxidants
Most natural antioxidants found in plant foods, which explains in part the healthy nature of fruits, vegetables and whole grains. In recent years, natural antioxidants have been investigated regarding their role in diseases of maximum impact in the West, including cardiovascular disease, numerous cancers, AIDS, and even some associated with aging, such as cataracts and the nervous system. Breathing in oxygen is essential for cellular life, but following the same produce "free radicals" and other "reactive oxygen molecules, which if not controlled properly, can lead to lifelong effects negative for its ability to alter DNA (genes), proteins and lipids. The studies focused on natural antioxidants in Vitamin E, Vitamin C, Beta-carotene, bioflavonoids, anthocyanins, sulfur compounds, selenium and zinc. The relationship between antioxidants and cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular disease and probably is now a scientifically substantiated claim. It is known that changing the "bad cholesterol" (LDL-c) plays a fundamental role in the initiation and development of atherosclerosis. Natural antioxidants may block free radicals and reactive oxygen molecules.

The studies linking free radicals to cancer are more complex and less resolutions. It is estimated that low levels of these antioxidants may be a risk factor for some cancers. This means that natural antioxidants could play a protective role. Every day we know more about antioxidants, and can promote their consumption through foods (vegetables, basically) that contain them, although it is still early to know whether or not ingesting commercial supplements with these items.