Reflection. Guest speaker. Nutrition

   We had a guest speaker today that came to our class to talk about nutrition. He asked us questions like why should we care about our nutrition and explained to us different topics like what we should do more, what foods to decrease, and what foods we should eat more of. In the beginning of the lecture, we talked about why we should care about our nutrition. We should care because it is the quality of life. We should set goals, and try new things with food. He mentioned that food should be fun so we could try things like cooking in groups, eating new foods or going to different restaurants that we don't usually go to, and try shopping for new foods at the grocery store. We should also care because our health will affect our future. What we choose to eat and how healthy we are now usually affects how we are in the future(this includes possible diseases if we choose bad things). Next he discussed what what we should do more of in our daily lives. He listed sleeping, exercising, and planning. Planning is what I found to be different and out of the ordinary. No one has ever told me to plan out my day with food. After he talked about what foods to decrease.
   Many of us are already familiar with what foods to decrease because we eat too much of it already. These foods include solid fats(butter, bread, and other fattening foods), added sugars(soda, lemonade, and candy), salt( causes high cholesterol, heart attacks, and stroke), and packaged or processed foods. He also gave us many facts that I was not aware of. He informed us that although we are supposed to decrease the amount of salt in our diet, American Heart says that up to 30% of our calories should come from salt. Another fact that I found really interesting was that 1500 mg is the average daily intake for salt sensitive people and these people mainly include African Americans and older people. And lastly, when looking on the Nutrition Facts on the back of an item, usually products say 0 grams of trans, but if you read the ingredients and it says that something is hydrogenated, then that means there is actually trans fat in that item.
   The last thing that we discussed was what we should eat more of. Many of us are already familiar with these things we just do not take the extra time to make sure that we have these items. First, we should eat more vegetables. These should be colorful, fresh or frozen( frozen is a better option and it is best when they are in season), and not canned( canned vegetables are particularly bad because of the salt they sit in). Second, we should eat more whole grain. This includes cereal, bread, pasta, brown rice, and other foods. Next, we should increase our fruit. Using fruit as a snack helps and dried fruit is also good for you. And lastly, we need to increase our meals. This would help to increase our metabolism and our energy throughout the day.
    In conclusion, we should make small changes to our overall food choices, set realistic goals for ourselves, and enjoy everything in moderation. I found this speech to be really helpful because I discovered things that I did not know before. This topic interests me because I have troubles with the food choices I make. This definitely impacts my life socially because I am on the track team and I have to constantly get speeches about my weight and I find it very embarrassing. This topic is very prominent to public health mainly because most people struggle with the topic of nutrition and it ultimately leads to fatal things. There aren't many questions I have about this topic, I just find these guidelines very meaningful, as we all should. These are things that we all should do and participate in as college students to better our overall health.