Have you ever heard the saying ‘you are what you eat’? Well, how true is it? To some people who have not discovered the wonders of cooking and the miracles a good meal could do to your body, the saying is far-fetched and fairy-tale like. But to others who have once licked their five fingers or their cutlery after a meal know that the saying nothing short of a hundred percent truth.
Before we continue, let’s see what eating is. According to Wikipedia, Eating is the ingestion of food, typically to provide a heterotrophic organism with energy and to allow for growth.
Foods contain combinations of nutrients and other healthful substances. No single food can supply all nutrients in the amounts you need. For example, oranges provide vitamin C but no vitamin B12; cheese provides vitamin B12 but no vitamin C. To make sure you get all of the nutrients and other substances needed for health, choose the recommended number of daily servings from each of the five major food groups: grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, meat and beans.
Every cell in your body has a ‘shelf life’—a stomach cell lives about a day or two, a skin cell about a month, and a red blood cell about four months. So each and every day, your body is busy making new cells to replace those that have “expired.” And how healthy those new cells are is directly determined by how well you’ve been eating. A diet filled with highly processed food that’s low on nutrients doesn’t give your body much to work with. I always say it’s like constructing a house with cardboard and tape instead of bricks and mortar. But a clean, nutrient rich, whole foods eating plan can help you build cells that work better, and are less susceptible to premature aging and disease.
YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT! The earlier you realize this and work with it, the better. For a clearer understanding of this, let’s use a simple illustration—a practical illustration:
You bought a vehicle, probably a car, which requires adequate maintenance for proper functionality. Some cars use p.m.s (Premium Motor Spirit) as their fuel while some use diesel. You can’t feed p.m.s to a diesel car and vice versa, it just won’t work. The car will choke on it and will definitely fail in its performance.
That’s exactly—to a very large extent, how the human system works. What goes through that mouth of yours goes a long way on the functionality of your body and to some point, your mind.
You eat trash, you become trash. You eat junk, you become a junkie. You eat healthy and you will be healthy.
I am not saying that poor men can’t eat well, nah—far from it. Eating adequately balanced diet won’t cost you more than you can actually afford. The ugly question rearing up its head now is: on what scale? Someone that ate one boiled egg and someone that ate ten eggs got relatively the same amount of protein.
Our main problem now in the society is: the average man’s mentality—I don’t have enough, so I can’t get things done. Who told you, you can’t get things done? Who told you that a thousand naira can’t prepare a good pot of food for you? Who told you that good food is for big men only? Nah—it’s a big fat lie that needs to be corrected with immediate effect.
Feeding on balanced diet is one of the sure (tested and trusted) way to a healthy living. Our great-grand parents down to even our parents lived for scores of years because: in their own little way they made sure they balanced their diet. In their days, they were all robust with glowing skin radiating perfect health.
Let me quickly drop another instance. In their days, there was no kwashiorkor (except during wars when there is food shortage), but nowadays you still hear and of course see the alarming rate of children with kwashiorkor. What changed? Do you want to tell me that even the poorest of men can’t afford salt for his meal? Nah—that’s not it. What actually changed is our mentality—the average man’s mentality became too average.
‘Food na food, so far e enta my belle’. Some don’t even drink water after eating. YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT! Let’s not deviate much from our talk. Food is the fuel that runs your body and this fuel that runs you must be refined so as to ensure maximum functionality.
To learn how to make your favourite meals, visit Foodnify Recipes