Healthy eating – what is it?

Nutrition jest an ancient problem of the utmost importance to the human health. Based on the historical sources the scientists estimated that in the last twenty centuries, the humankind was stroke by huge famines almost 500 times. For example, two huge famines which happed in the 18th century India cost the lives of 10 million people. In the year 1927 in China 10 million people died of hunger. During the World War I, over 200 million people suffered malnutrition for many years. Nowadays, malnutrition and famine still is a problem of many courtiers around the world. But the even faster growing problem is excessive eating and its consequences, obesity, diabetes, blood hypertension, etc.

What should we eat?

Healthy food, that means the food that provides our body with all ingredients needed for its proper functioning and development, in correct amounts and at proper intervals. What do we need to provide our body with? Our meals must contain all sorts of food:

• proteins
• fats
• carbohydrates
• minerals and vitamins

We will achieve our aim if we balance our diet so that it contains all types of products belonging to different food categories. Human body is not a collection of separate system. Human body is a whole. In sickness, a diet should account not only for the need of a sick organ, but of the whole body. Daily food intake should be divided into meals, 3 to 5 at best. The optimum number of meals is related to the physiology of a human body, absorption and digestion processes, etc. Every meal should be eaten slowly, thoroughly chewed and washed down with liquid. Today's predominant eating habit of eating almost nothing during a day, and then treating oneself with a full supper in the evening is an extremely unhealthy one.

What are the consequences?

Can anyone be healthy if he/she has an unhealthy lifestyle and eats junk food in a hurry? NO, because a human body is not a waste bin, and eating is not just about satisfying one's hunger.

"O noble health No one will learn, How good you taste, Until you fail"

dr Anita Nekanda-Trepka

Jan Kochanowski's epigram "On Health" translated by Michael J. Mikoś