Nutrition Facts That Nutritionists Agree On

Submitted by Alicia Sanders
Posted on 05 Jun, 2020

If you’ve spent any amount of time on health websites on the internet you’ve probably noticed that it hardly seems like any two people can agree on the same nutrition advice. While it seems like everybody has a different opinion about how to eat right, there are a few basic food facts that are too true for anyone to deny.

The Evil of Trans Fats
Trans fats are unsaturated fats that mostly come from the labs that make industrial, processed foods. They only rarely occur in nature, and should not be part of any food meant for human consumption. Trans fats have been linked to heart disease, bad cholesterol, damaging good cholesterol. The good news is that transfats are facing more and more governmental restrictions, including outright bans. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t still out there, and everyone agrees you need to avoid them.

Just Say No to Sugar
Sugar is a lot more than just empty calories. Sugars do real harm to your body by causing you to overeat as the body quickly processes it, gives you a rush, and then quickly dissipates, leaving you wanting to eat again. Sugar is also a culprit in causing heart disease and diabetes. Sugar is almost unavoidable, but everyone agrees that you need to be responsible about how much of it you actually let into your body.

Replace Your Lost Vitamin D
Vitamin D is what our bodies absorb from sunlight. With most of us working and spending our free time indoors, our bodies are not getting the required amount of Vitamin D. Winter weather and areas with heavy cloud cover also cut down the amount of Vitamin D we can absorb. You need to replace this lost sunlight with more Vitamin D, or else risk developing cancers, diabetes and osteoporosis. The best way to up your Vitamin D levels is to take a supplement. There isn’t that much of it in most foods we eat.

Eating Healthy Means Eating
Supplements are never going to replace a real diet built around a healthy number of calories. There is a certain diet philosophy that says the nutritional benefits found in foods are all your body needs, not the foods themselves, but that type of thinking is just wrong, and unhealthy.

When you eat fruit, for example, you are getting a lot more than just a healthy fructose bump. There are lots of other nutrients inside that piece of fruit that, though they may only be there in small amounts, are there nonetheless. You are getting the same amount of vitamins and nutrients by eating foods as you are getting by taking a multivitamin or a supplement. Not that supplements are bad–they provide an excellent way to add nutrients to your diet that normal foods can’t give you, like in the case of Vitamin D above–but there is no replacement for the health benefits of a real meal.