Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Daily Lessons: Food Facts

I was not able to post here yesterday because I was in school for most of the day. This is the first time that I realized that it is hard to maintain your blog if you got stuff to do in the other aspects of your daily life. Anyways, the good thing about going to school everyday is that from time to time, we get to learn valuable lessons that we can share with the readers of our blog, and for my case, you! Oh yes, very precious you.

Earlier this morning, our teacher in Drugs and Solutions was absent. We had our break then proceeded to our Nutrition class. Truth is, I find this subject quite boring because of the tone of our teacher's voice and the time of the subject. But even though it's not that interesting, lessons taught here have great appeal to me since we talk about food and later this semester, we'll be cooking and of course, we'll eat. But of course, everything begins with the basics.

For the past three meetings of our Nutrition, we've been discussing the nutrient contents of the different food. When planning our daily meals, whether to gain, lose, or maintain weight, lots of factors should be put into play. These are BMI (Body Mass Index), DBW (Desired Body Weight), and the TER (Total Energy Requirement). I was amazed to know that my Total Energy Requirement was 2450g of calories but I was also disappointed to learn that this 2450g of calories pile up so easily.

The kinds of food that one usually eats surprisingly has so much calories in it. For example, a half cup of plain steamed rice, as I mentioned in one of my previous posts, has 23g of carbohydrates, 2g of protein, 100g of calories, and none of fat. The good thing is that our diet can be broken into three parts, the carbs, the proteins, and the fat.

The carbohydrates may comprise 50% to 60% of one's diet. Protein, 10% to 15%, and fat, 20% to 30%. The rates may be adjusted according to one's preference of food but the total, of course, must total to 100%. These rates are the normal accepted value and any excess or lack thereof are considered abnormal and therefor, may have side effects. An example is a high protein diet. High protein diets help body builders gain more muscle weight (not fat) but may lead to kidney diseases.

Exercising is good for our appearance and our health, but any amount of exercise will amount to nothing if we do not eat right. Just like how the old saying goes, "What we eat is what we are."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I eat oysters, i am an oyster. :D Kidding. great post. astig ka pala, health concious.