Nutrition Advice is Changing Fast
Eat your vitamins, drink 8 glasses of water a day, keep junk foods to a minimum. These pieces of advice are probably imprinted into your ideas of what a healthy lifestyle entails. Even so, we probably also have a few extra pieces of advice mixed in like ‘it’s okay to cheat on the weekends’ and ‘having a junk food binge after a week-long streak of healthy eating is alright’.
These little cheats have helped us to excuse a little bit of slacking in our nutrition, but more and more research in healthy eating is starting to shed some light on more of these ideas and whether or not they’re really acceptable for a healthy lifestyle.
Article: Weekend binges just as bad for the gut as a regular junk food diet, study suggests
Junk food has been a popular topic up for discussion, as it’s what we tend to cheat on with our diets the most. Binging on weekends or when we’re feeling that sweet tooth craving can have more negative impacts than we may have assumed.
Article: How to Stop Binge Eating in Three Unusual Steps
Aussie research shows that even if you eat all your vitamins, junk-food binges may be worse for us than previously thought. In the US, another recent study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine has shown that just one day of unhealthy eating can impact our quality of sleep.
The effects can ripple out into further health concerns like stroke in seniors and a greater risk of heart attack. Not to mention, we just end up feeling cruddy when we’re sleepy.
Article: Poor sleep may raise the risk of heart attack, stroke
So what makes a junk food ‘junky’ for our bodies? Instead of saturated fats, which might not all be bad, the real number 1 dietary cause of heart disease is sugar. This comes from naturopathic medicine and medical research is now starting to agree.
Article: The evidence for saturated fat and sugar related to coronary heart disease
Many of the basic understandings we have about eating well are areas of active research. Keeping up to date is hard, and myths about healthy eating are everywhere. But these recent findings are important to note, especially if you’re one of those people that allow for junk food ‘cheats’ now and then.
HSG offers nutrition seminars where you can get the right info and inspire your whole workplace to make better food choices. By giving your staff important nutritional information and tips for healthy cooking, you empower them to make wiser choices about the food they eat and how to maintain their long-term health. In turn, the company benefits because healthier employees lead to:
- Reduced health costs associated with absenteeism and sick leave
- Improved focus and productivity
Learn more about our nutrition seminars.
