Optimum Nutrition Is Needed for Optimum Health

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Health and nutrition are very personal and unique to each individual. There is no one approach for optimum health. Our nutritional and lifestyle needs change with age, pregnancy, ill health as well as career and life demands. The food that we eat essentially becomes us through various metabolic pathways that convert food to energy and new cells. Therefore if we become what we eat, it makes sense to opt for optimum quality to produce optimum results. Optimum health however does not come from nutrition alone. Nutrition is one aspect of a synergy of lifestyle choices and one’s environment, which include hygiene; exercise, drinking enough clean water, and one’s mental health status that contribute to optimum health and wellbeing. Foods play a vital role in supporting health. (Rolfes et al. 2012, p.25). We all have to eat and drink to survive. The modern nutritional landscape can be complex and contradictory (Gedgaudas 2009, p. xiii). One-size-fits-all is a size that fits no one (Gedgaudas 2009, p. xiii). So what is a healthy diet? The optimal human diet is not something that should have to require overly careful formulation by calories or percentages, much less by blood type (Gedgaudas 2009, p.1). Although as humans we are physiologically alike, biochemically we are very different, therefore optimum nutrition must be tailored to one’s individual needs. As soon as we put food in our mouths, digestion begins in preparation for absorption (Rolfes et al. 2012, p.69). The food moves through various organs in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract starting with ingestion and ending with the waste being expelled as elimination. Within three or four hours after a person has eaten, the body must find a way to absorb the molecules derived from carbohydrate, protein, fat, vitamin and mineral digestion (Rolfes et al. 2012, p.78). In an ideal healthy digestive system everything we eat
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