With so much promoting these days, guess every one knows that a good diet is very important for good health by now. A healthy and varied diet would help you to maintain a healthy body weight, improve your general well being and help reduce the risk of diseases such as heart disease, strokes, cancer, diabetes and osteoporosis.

First of all, let’s discuss what a balanced diet is. In medical terms it is a combination of food choices from each of the basic food groups, eating food from the food groups gives the body the nutrients needed for good health. The five food groups are Grain, Fruits, Vegetables, Dairy and Meat. Apart form these it is also essential to get enough vitamins, mineral salts and fibre.

A lot of today’s nutritionists don’t tell you to eat enough of the food groups, they say eat Carbohydrates; these are an excellent source of energy. Proteins; these help the body grow and repair. Fats; these are another source of energy, but also contain some vitamins. Vitamins; required in small doses to help keep you healthy. Mineral Salts; these help keep your bones, teeth and muscles healthy. Fibre; this is required to keep intestines functioning properly. You must have carbohydrate, protein, fat, vitamins, minerals salts and fibre in the correct proportions. If there is not enough protein, you will not be able to grow properly and you will not be able to repair yourself i.e. wounds will not heal properly. If you do not have enough energy containing foods you will feel very tired, you will not have enough energy. If you have too much energy containing foods you will become overweight. If you think that you are overweight you might try taking more exercise to ‘burn off’ some of the excess food which you ate at you last meal.

For carbohydrates you should be eating bread, potatoes, yams, breakfast cereals, pasta, rice, oats, noodles, maize, millet and cornmeal.

For diary you should be eating cheese, yoghurt which is my favourite and I make my own, fromage frais, drinking milk and calcium fortified soya products.

For meat you should be eating meat, poultry, fish, eggs and some alternatives such as; nuts, tofu, textured vegetable protein (TVP), beans and pulses.

For Fruit/Vegetables you should be eating fresh, frozen, dried and canned fruit, but check out the sugars!, and vegetables. Not forgetting also, that beans and pulses contribute to this group.
Also don’t forget to get enough fluids, 1.5 to 2 litres of fluids are recommended; these include water which most people are not keen on, squash, fruit juices, some people include tea and coffee. Don’t forget you gain some fluids from the food you eat.

Excessive amounts of alcohol should be avoided in a healthy diet, but it is ok as long as you drink sensibly. Checked out that a maximum of 3-4 units for men, 2-3 for women a day is enough. A unit is 25ml of spirits, 125ml of wine or a half pint of lager, beer or cider. Please note that binge drinking can have severe effects on your health, as it mainly damages the liver. The liver is needed to help digests food. It also helps create chemicals that fight off infections/viruses and poisons; it helps keep the blood clean and well maintained. The liver also makes bile, which is needed to digest fats.

Most times I find it very tough going to keep to a sensible balanced diet as there are so many delicious and a wide variety of foods around. May be just eat first and detox later….

Does your parmesan cheese turn mouldy with the bluish-green color after sometime in your What do you do with it?

I like cheese but I am always hesitant to buy it due to the above encounter. I guess we cannot escape this because recently I came across an article on how to store cheese properly.
For example, if you need to use it in a week’s time, wrap the parmesan in a layer of clean, dry paper towels. Place it in a plastic container large enough for breathing space around the parmesan cheese. Cover and keep in the main part of your fridge or the chiller.
For longer periods up to three weeks, wrap the cheese tightly in a plastic wrapper, store it in a plastic container and place in the chiller. If the cheese starts to get mouldy, unwrap it, slice and discard off the mouldy parts. If the cheese is damp, pat it with clean paper towels, re-wrap and put it back into the container. Chill again.

The vitamins are really essential for our health. Generally, all vitamins have their own use; however vitamin e is one of the most important types of vitamin. Those who lack vitamins in their body are advised by their doctor to take medicines which contain vitamins, for example vitamin d3 to fulfill their daily need. Cheese has lots of energy and calories. However its storage is a bit difficult. People need to wrap it in dry paper towel to keep it fresh and tasty.

Remember that Cheese needs to be handled as little as possible and use only clean utensils.

I don’t know why but dragon fruit never attracted me to buy whenever I passed by this fruit. Yesterday I received two from a friend! I was thinking oh-oh, so in the end I had to ask my friend how do you actually eat it. Of course, she was very surprised that I, of all people don’t buy or eat this fruit. For some reason or other, I also don’t know why but anyway, I decided to give it a go.

“Just cut the fruit into half and to eat it, just scoop up the flesh with a spoon,” said my friend, amused. So I did as told and imagined what a shock I had…I just got bowled over…it was very sweet, juicy and crunchy, even the black seeds were edible and I immediately finished the other half. My family is now looking forward to eating more of this fruit very soon.

I decided to check out this fruit and what I found…? That it is a fruit of a cactus plant originated from South America. There are two common species of this pink fruit in the market - the white flesh and the other with a purple-red flesh. The texture is slightly similar to the watermelon and tastes like the golden kiwifruit. Dragon fruit comprises of 80 per cent water and is considered to be a thirst quencher.

The nutritional contents in a Dragon fruit pulp are Vitamin C, (said to be more than watermelon and apple) soluble fibre, calcium, iron and phosphorous. The red-purple specie is found to have carotenoids due to its pigment, said to improve eyesight, protection against some cancers and heart diseases, a phytochemical and anti-oxidant that is known as having many health promoting qualities.

I am told that to select for a ripe dragon fruit, the fruit should be heavy, firm and have a waxy look with scales that are fresh and greenish looking. If you want it sweeter, store the fruit a bit longer so the water from the skin moves to the pulp though the flavour would be a bit bland, if you don’t mind that. Enjoy….
(Would have uploaded a pix of the dragon fruit here but there is a malfunction in the coding?)

I have this tendency to get my fats understanding mixed up sometimes, so I decided to write out about the fats and oils thats supposed to be either good or bad for our body…

Fats and oils are the most important supplements of our daily diet as they are major source of fats and carbohydrates. When it comes to fats and carbohydrates eating, people become excessively conscious about the cholesterol levels in the body. Fats are actually very important, as they are the food supplements that maintain the energy levels in the body. What is even more fascinating is that fats are important for keeping body warm.

Our body gathers energy by burning the food we eat through the process of digestion. The energy produced by the food digestion is utilized by the body for various physical and mental activities.

While energy produced is more than the level of energy consumption, our body stores the additional energy of food in the form of fats under the surface of skin. So, at the time of excess physical activity, this stored fat is utilized by the body to maintain its strength.

The various sources of fats are the various oils which we use daily in cooking and frying our food. However, maintaining a balanced consumption level of fats and oils is very necessary as it is proclaimed by the doctors that only 10% of our daily energy should be derived from fats or in other words fats and oils should be utilized in a quantity which should be as low as 10% of the whole day’s diet.

On a surface level fats, can be divided into two groups - saturated fats and unsaturated fats. Unsaturated fats are the ones, which are extracted from plants, and since they are natural they are supposed to be good for health whereas unsaturated fats are ones, which are extracted from the animal products like meat, milk and cream.

On the other hand, if compared to the unsaturated fats, saturated fats are healthier although they are associated with atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). Saturated fats increase the blood cholesterol and so doctors recommend their less use in the diet. Actually our body fulfills the need of saturated fats by producing or rather extracting it from unsaturated fats synthesis during the food digestion process.

Yes, it is essential to maintain a healthy level of healthy fats and oils in the daily diet to have a healthy heart and a fit body. That reminds me, I should add more drizzle of olive oil to my salads…