Have you ever wondered why we eat food? It's a thing that we and every other living thing on the planet does, but what purpose does it serve?.
When we're hungry we know that if we eat something, the hunger will go away but obviously it's much more important than that.
Firstly, we eat food to provide ourselves with a source of energy, the amount of which is measured in calories. Every single function of our bodies requires energy to run it from the physical things like running and jumping, to the less obvious things such as beating your heart and fueling your brain. Without a source of energy from our food, none of these things would be possible and we would just fade away and die.
The next major reason for eating food is to take in all the right building blocks that our bodies need in order to keep them in tip top condition. To repair any damage and to keep things running as they should takes an incredible array of different nutrients. You need plenty of the right types of fats to produce hormones and repair every cell in your body, good quality protein to build and repair your muscles and a bewildering array of other vitamins and minerals to ensure that your body functions properly without breaking down and developing a disease.
Unfortunately, these days we seem to have forgotten the importance of this and we make our food choices mainly based on convenience or eating pleasure.
In our early years, our bodies are very new and quite resilient and we seem to be able to get away with eating a poor diet. It's only after eating poorly for a number of years that our bodies show the signs of getting older and begin to break down. This is when chronic disease starts to appear. Diabetes, heart disease, many cancers and Alzheimer's are just a few of the common ones.
These are all labeled 'lifestyle diseases' as they are all heavily influenced by a person's lifestyle choices. In the vast majority of cases, they appear after a number of years of poor lifestyle choices. They are all becoming more and more common at an alarming rate. It seems today that everyone knows someone that has at least one if not more of these diseases, but go back twenty or thirty years and they were almost unheard of.
It's no coincidence that over the same period of time processed foods, ready meals and take always have grown from being a very occasional meal choice to being the bulk of many people's diets. The majority of these foods contain poor quality cheap ingredients and have been processed to a point where they contain very little good nutrition. They will still have calories in them and so will provide a source of energy, but that is about all they will do.
There will be very little of the vitamins and minerals needed to keep those diseases of lifestyle at bay. Sickness will therefore be the inevitable outcome.
I know what my food does for me because I eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, good quality meat and fish and plenty of healthy fats. My food prevents me from getting a chronic disease.
What does your food do for you?
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