Archive for October, 2011
Reducing the cost of Healthy Food
When you visit a dietician or doctor, they recommend you eat healthy food that contains nutrients required by your body. However, these foods are not cheap as you have to spend extra to buy these foods. In a recent study, it was found that Americans have to spend $380 a year to buy fruits and vegetables that are required by the body.
Most people reading this article must be aware that eating healthy is expensive when compared to unhealthy food. A study has found that eating food that can increase the calorie from saturated fat by 1 percent will reduce your food cost by 28 cents and eating foods that can increase your calories from added sugar by 1 percent can reduce your cost by 7 cents.
The high cost of healthy food is forcing many people to eat food that are unhealthy. Many people that we spoke to were aware of the food they must eat but they were unable to eat the required food items because they were expensive.
Potassium is one of the most expensive nutrients and it is recommended that you eat at least 4,700 mg of potassium in a day. Most people on an average have only 2,800 mg in a day which means that people will have to spend at least $1.04 a day to make up for the difference. Also, having enough Vitamin D and required dietary fibres that increase your expenses by $0.35 per day for each nutrient.
Therefore it is important that people have food that have all the required nutrients but are not expensive. Here are a few tips that can help you:
When buying healthy food you can buy food that have the nutrients that your body requires but are inexpensive. For instance, you can buy bananas that contain about 500 mg of potassium and avoid buying nectarines even though it has more potassium per calorie because it is expensive.
To reduce your expenses, you can eat food that contains several nutrients that are required by the body. For instance, foods such as beans, banana and white beans contain several nutrients that are required by the body.
You can also reduce your food expenses by eating dried food that are cheap and contain nutrients that are required by the body. You can eat dried prunes because they are cheap and contain potassium. However, people who suffer from diabetes must eat dried food in moderate amounts because they are high in sugar.
Balancing your diet can also help you reduce your food expenses. For example, even though potatoes are inexpensive source of potassium you need to have at least 11 servings to meet your daily potassium requirement. Therefore it is important that you eat food items like seeds, bananas, nuts and milk with potato to make sure your body gets the recommended amount of nutrients.
How Do Carb Blockers with Kidney Bean Extract Block Carbs?
Obesity has been an issue for so many people worldwide, and facts have shown that since the 1980’s, the amount of obese people has doubled. All of us, no matter if we like it or not, we are close to this issue, if it’s not us, it would be someone we know. A family member that just went through dialysis because even in her 20’s she already is diagnosed with kidney failure and the main culprit is obesity as the doctor’s suggest because she has never been within acceptable weight ranges all throughout her childhood. It maybe a friend who lost his job and got depressed and ate his way to 305lbs when he is only 5’8”.
What I’m saying is, it’s not just about us or someone we know, as you are reading this, you should know that so many others out there are also at war against obesity. That is why the scientific community has been doing endless studies on how to counter it and one of the ways that have surfaced is through carbohydrates blocking. They understand that exercise and diet alone will not suffice in helping people who are already in a state of obesity and that they got this way because of unhealthy eating habits, and that’s the key word “HABITS”, because they are hard to break, literally, so instead of focusing on simply imposing new and better habits on people who suffer obesity.
The scientific community new they had to find new and practical ways on how to help them curb up their old unhealthy ones. And when it comes to science, they always believe that there is reason for everything and it stand true on this one, mainly are body reacts in certain ways when we introduce certain nutrients to it and the focus of this article is carbohydrates.
Carbohydrates Blocking
Research over the years has consistently shown a direct and relative association between obesity and excessive complex carbohydrates intake. Hence interest in trying to come up with practical ways to reduce this appetite started and starch blockers were what they came up with. The mechanics behind this is that, the natural enzymes found in our saliva and pancreas called alpha-amylase is prevented in doing its primary function from breaking down carbohydrates to glucose for the body to absorb and in turn less carbohydrate calories will be taken by the body from these foods and thereby helping to lose weight.
Kidney Bean Extract
Phaselous vulgaris is the scientific term for kidney bean extract and this is the active ingredient in starch blockers. It is what primarily inhibits alpha amylase from doing its natural function as a digestive enzyme as stated above.
Not A Magic Pill
In any case, kidney bean extract is merely here to enhance our efforts to avoid carbohydrate absorptions but it will not in any way prevent it entirely. Actual limitation of carbohydrates intake is still a must but at least now we have something that can make the fight a little easier because even if it will not allow us to eat all the starch we want and avoid the harmful effects, it will take at least half the responsibility. The other half is ours.
