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Introduction
I have always been a big advocate of living and eating healthy. I have always tried to strive for healthier choices when it comes to my diet and life in general. Growing up I would often eat vegetables and fruits as they were stable part of my diet and luckily, I grew up in house where healthy diet and vegetables were promoted and not frowned upon. Early in life I discovered that eating healthy comes with variety of benefits. These benefits are not only the physical health related benefits but mental health benefits as well. The mental side of things can be divided further into smaller pieces but what I mean is that eating healthy always gave me this meaningful and good feeling. A feeling that I am actually contributing to my health and not destroying it by eating unhealthily. Somebody I knew once said that every time you eat food you either are fighting disease or contributing to it and this really stuck with me since I believe that it is generally true. In modern day and age eating healthy is even more important than ever because there is an abundance of food at least in the western countries. However, a vast majority of that food is unhealthy processed vegetable-oil ridden refined carbohydrate infested garbage. It is easier than ever to make the wrong decisions when you are local supermarket and I have noticed that a lot of people in my circle eat unhealthy without knowing it. I don’t mean that they are completely oblivious to the fact but according to my experience they greatly underestimate for unhealthy something they eat is.
Why should you eat healthy?
My sources for this whole post are going to be “just trust me bro” and “I made that up” which is based in my opinion. However, a lot of the things that I’m about to say ring true and is actually scientifically proven by decades and mountains of previous research conducted by various facilities and universities around the world. These days it is easy to find reliable information about diet and certain nutrients and what not when you just google studies. There is a great website for this where you can find a lot of research but I’m not sure if I can say the name of the website in this article so I will leave it out just to be sure. Better safe than sound they say.
It is widely understood that humans need a wide variety of different micro and macronutrients to thrive. This is especially true for children who are still in development phase and to successfully roll out updates they need all the necessary nutrients. However, this is also true for adults as well. If adults don’t get all the necessary nutrients in adequate amounts they will develop deficiencies. Depending on the nutrient such deficiencies can range from relatively harmless to deadly. One great way to prevent any deficiencies from developing is to eat healthy and balanced diet that is filled with all the micro and macro nutrients and vitamins that the human body needs. However, deficiencies are just one part of the puzzle that comes with unhealthy diet.
There are three big diseases that plague the humankind and cause a lot of unnecessary deaths all around the world. These are diabetes (also known as diabeetus on the internet), cancer and all the different versions currently available of cancer and cardiovascular disease and all its versions. These kill a lot of people in the world and statistically speaking if you live in a western country, you’re most likely cause of death will be cardiovascular disease. That considered you should pay a lot of attention to your diet and the choices that you make because they will have an impact on this disease, I will explain why.
It is widely understood and backed by decades of research that cardiovascular diseases are at least partially caused by dietary choices. Saturated fat is known to contribute to development of cardiovascular diseases. The way that humans get saturated fat is by eating animal products such as meat, milk, cheese, eggs and fat. The interesting fact about these foods is that they actually also contribute to the development of cancer and diabetes. Many people mistakenly think that sugar causes diabetes when in fact type two diabetes is caused by fat which kills the cells in your pancreas. Meat and animal products also cause various cancers, but I won’t delve too deep into that topic in this post.
How to eat healthier
If what I just wrote resonated with you, and you want to start to live healthier life I have good news for you. Eating healthy is actually both cheap and easy. Easy starting point for better diet is to cut out all the processed foods. These are usually things like, sausages, cookies, chips, prepackaged foods, precooked foods, candy, ice cream, different pastries, different slices of meat such as Mettwurst and sugary juices and sodas. By cutting these foods out of your diet you are instantly making your diet healthier. If you want to take this further, you can cut out animal products completely and replace them with vegetables. You can introduce certain healthy foods to your diet as nuts, seeds, whole grains, vegetables, fruits, and legumes. These foods are known to contribute to healthy lifestyle and on top of that they are usually very cheap. One big thing that people often get wrong is that they think that eating healthy is expensive. However, prepackaged, or cooked food is usually a lot more expensive than a nice stack of fresh vegetables, legume such as beans and fruits. If you feel like that you can’t or don’t want to cut out certain foods that are unhealthy, but you like them then an easy approach is to tone down the quantity that you consume. For example, if you enjoy eating steak that will clog your arteries and cause cancer then instead of eating it three times a week you can eat it once a week. This is not optimal of course, but it is better than nothing and often is more implementable for a lot of people than cutting the food completely from your diet.
Conclusion
Eating healthy is important because eating unhealthily will help certain life-threatening disease to develop. Luckily, there are many things that you can do to improve your diet such as cutting out unhealthy foods or toning down the amount that you eat them. You can also add healthy foods such as nuts, seeds, whole grains and legumes to your diet to make it more healthy and contribute to your healthy lifestyle.