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24 March 2009DIET FOR YOUR HEALTH

Too often I find that the diet is made up in one day of toast, sweetened coffee or tea, biscuits, soft drink, a meat pie or sausage roll, hot chips; cream bun; sausages or fried foods, bread, tomato sauce, and peas, mashed potato and gravy.

This is typical food for a number of working persons in Australia. These foods are high in refined carbohydrates, fat, artificial additives. Although these people gain weight, some are suffering from malnutrition, which we consider when we think of the starving children of the third-world countries.

This is not the case for the average Australian. However, with such a diet there is a possibility that some micro-nutrients, fibre and even protein may be lacking, and the daily balance of nutrients is way out. In the sample, there is far too much fat, too much cholesterol, the salt (sodium) level is too high, so is the refined sugar. Let’s just look at some of the levels of nutrients in this daily diet and see what we have. I think a lot of you will be surprised.

Food substance
mg sodium
bread (two slices)
230
butter (one teaspoon)
200
meat pie
750
hot chips
150
biscuits (two sweet)
80
sausage (two)
1000
tomato sauce (2 tablespoons)
600
gravy (1 teaspoon dry mix)
300
TOTAL 3310

This level of sodium (salt) in our diet is far in excess of what the average Australian needs to maintain a healthy life. I made no allowance for salt to be added to any of the above meals.

Research has shown us that the average Australian consumes around 4000mg of sodium per day when only 200mg to 300mg of sodium is required each day by the average working Australian to maintain a healthy life.

This excess of sodium in the body can cause many problems such as increased blood pressure and increased fluid retention.

The excess sodium that has been supplied by the diet is usually excreted by the kidneys and to do this the normal fluid levels in the body are raised so that the extra sodium can be kept in solution and the normal fluid sodium concentration in the body can be met. Because of this the blood volume in the arteries is increased followed by a corresponding increase in the blood pressure. This increase in blood pressure is returned to normal when the excess sodium is excreted from the body. However, there are about 30 per cent of Australians that are generally sensitive to excess sodium in their diets. These people could have permanently elevated blood pressure which could result in premature heart diseases, if they continually eat salty foods.

You may ask, ‘If we can’t eat the type of diet shown above, what can we eat?’

To answer that question I have put together a basic daily diet containing all of the basic food groups of dairy products, meat, fish, eggs, fruit, and vegetables.

Fad diets and eating habits, if not advised by your practitioner, can be dangerous to your health. If you reduce your intake of calories to less than 450 per day you slow down the production of thyroxin in the body and lower your metabolic rate and this 1 lowering of metabolic rate could remain even after resuming normal eating habits. The problem then is that the weight just comes back again.

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