What Are Your 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 the necessary food,
vitamins, and minerals so that we continue to thrive in our
daily life processes. 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 ourselves is the
key to fulfilling those nutritional needs. Good nutrition should
be the ultimate goal of every person alive.