"Nature has given you the most luxurious high-end car that you could imagine. Why then put any type of fuel in it, if you want your engine to last?".
That is the question to which the dietitian-nutritionist Luis Alberto Zamora and the journalist Alberto Herrera have answered in Eating well is easy if you know how (Planet), a book in which they offer the guidelines to regain control of our feeding in a sensible and realistic way.
Its objective, according to the authors, is "to achieve nutritional balance".
To do this, the first step would be to assimilate something as basic as eating is not the same as nourishing yourself.
"Eating is putting food in your mouth. Period. But nourishing is, in addition to this, providing our body with the nutrients it needs every day to be healthy and function well," they assert.
You recommend that, when going to the supermarket, we ask ourselves: "Could my grandparents buy this?"
Did they eat so well on them and so badly on us?
In theory, we have more information.
Do we have too much marketing and junk food and we lack common sense? The key is not if they ate better or worse, but that they did not have all the
superfluous food
that we have now.
Fundamentally, ultra-processed foods.
They had access to good processed foods, such as preserves, but their diet was based on fresh foods and mainly vegetables.
Meat and fish did not appear on the table every day, but we are
'infoxicated'
.
We have so much that we don't know where to start or what is true and what is not.
We need a 'nutrition class' in the face of abundance, which is precisely why the book came about.
We considered that, in a market with so many nutrition and food books, it was necessary to make a simple, very practical one that parents and children would like.
A book full of drawings, diagrams and direct messages ... like our favorite 'school' textbooks!
Let's start from scratch.
How do we 'redecorate' our pantries to start nourishing ourselves properly?
What would be the tricks to make the perfect shopping cart? Planning.
It is essential to go with a plan of attack to the supermarket to buy
only what I need
and not end up with a basket full of food and products that are the result of whim, impulse, and 'just in case'. It is about
investing 10 or 15 minutes in planning
what we are going to have for lunch and dinner during the week and transcribe it to a good shopping list, well planned.
This is, without a doubt, the best trick of all before stepping on the supermarket floor.It is also a good idea to go with a full stomach, because as you go into the supermarket hungry, I tell you that you do not give to buy two more packages of chard!
What are 'cheat foods' and why are they so 'dangerous'? Cheat foods are those that end up in our shopping cart and are totally unnecessary or simply provide more nutrients than we precisely have to They are the ones who eat confidently, thinking that you are not messing up because they put on makeup and only show their
supposedly healthy
nuances
.
You have to be careful with them because if we trust ourselves we can eat even more than necessary.
In this 'mixed bag', the ultra-processed enter;
they are, fundamentally, foods that tend to be excess in salt, sugars and fats and whose continued and excessive consumption is related to a greater risk of suffering cardiovascular diseases or even certain types of cancer.
Speaking of 'cheats', what do we do with the '0'?
What should we take into account so that we are not given a hoax? We invite the reader to be critical and ask questions when faced with a suspiciously striking labeling 0% what?
Calories?
Fat?
Sugars?
It may be that a product is 0% sugar, but has a much higher amount of fat than recommended and vice versa.
The problem with these products is - again - in the
'halo effect' or 'saccharin effect'.
We lower our guard and, since they are 'good', we eat more.
And, in the end, we even make larger intakes of nutrients to control than if we had eaten the product that is not 0. We live in the times of the nutritional exaltation of kale, quinoa, etc.
Are they as good as they say or are their marketing managers good? First of all, we must change the chip because food is not a 'movie'.
Here
there are no good or bad foods
, but daily or optional consumption (it's okay not to eat them). We can say that these so-called 'superfoods' are interesting.
It is true that they are rich in certain nutrients.
But it is also true that those same nutrients can be obtained with lifelong foods, in greater quantity and at a lower price.If we understand that for the food industry we are fish trying to be caught with any type of claim, we will become more critical and we will have more resources to escape the network.We
prefer lentils,
at 1.50 euros per kilo, than quinoa at 6.80.
And they have more protein!
What are “talkative foods?” Foods that, like the growth vendors of the West, are hyped as healthy and are not.
In fact, the more they want to convince us that a product is healthy, the more critical we have to be with it and with its label.
We talk about 'light', 'without', 'with', 'rich in', etc.
Faced with such a 'noble title', it is necessary to be suspicious and critical. Why are juices or smoothies not as healthy as a piece of fruit? For many reasons that are lost at the moment we transform the fruit.
First, by time: it does not take the same time to eat an orange as to 'swallow' a juice that is made with two or three at least.
In addition, the same speed will have the
glucose
from that juice to appear and disappear in your blood, making -in the process- higher glycemic peaks.An excess
can be transformed into fat
and the subsequent slump can cause us to hunger in a short time, with which , It is not a good tool to satisfy ourselves. Also because we have left the fiber along the way and the process of chewing and eating little by little. We are not saying that orange juices 8 that are very rich9 disappear from our lives, but neither do the We would eat breakfast every day out of habit. What do we do with meat? Be responsible with it and get rid of the feeling that one day we have not eaten well if we have not tasted it.
In fact, we should reduce the consumption of meat and replace it with legumes.
We would gain a lot in health.
Why should we not do without carbohydrates? We start from the basis that removing all carbohydrates from the diet is almost an impossible mission.
Almost all foods, to a greater or lesser extent, except for isolated cases such as olive oil, have carbohydrates. We must not forget that carbohydrates are the
main metabolic fuel for the body
.
The body is optimized to metabolize glucose, and to obtain energy from other nutrients, we first have to transform them into glucose, so the question we must ask ourselves is:
do I really need that much energy for the little that I am going to move?
Because we continue to eat the same amounts as our grandparents but we move much less.
Before having a car was a luxury and, now, luxury is the ride. When we talk about it in the context of a diet, there are even more nuances.
If we drastically restrict carbohydrates in the body, we are forcing the body to turn to other sources.
First from fats, and then, or depending on the energy demand of the moment, from proteins, mainly from muscles.
And this comes at a price, since it is not easy to transform fat and protein into glucose.
When we do it 'in a hurry', as is the case with severe glucose restriction, we in turn generate toxic metabolites in the body, such as ketones or ammonia, which, when accumulated within the body, have negative consequences. 'miracle' diet, is not an abusive protein intake being promoted?
In the history of 'social' nutrition there is an eternal search for culprits and solutions.
In the same way, that carbohydrates and fats take turns being the 'bad guys' of the film, proteins seem to
have been elevated to the olympic of nutrients
because they provide few calories, are satiating and, in addition, The calories that the body does not use to generate fat reserves or as fuel, so it seemed the ideal solution to all our problems. But, as we said in the book, the basis of a healthy nutrition is in a very simple word;
Balance.
The excess of any group is always bad.
In the case of proteins,
continuous
excessive consumption
also has its price and
especially punishes the kidney
, since we make it work more than necessary.It is true that two things must be ensured: on the one hand, the amount of protein that we need every day, although according to various studies, on average, we Spaniards would be consuming almost double what we need.
And on the other, choose quality;
eat less animal-based protein and consume more plant-based protein from legumes and nuts.
Can't we 'sin' on occasion? Of course!
Eating is a pleasure and always has to be a pleasure.
We have to banish the word and the feeling of 'sinning'.
Foods for occasional and optional consumption are just that, food to eat on certain occasions and only if we want to.
If we don't want to, nothing happens because our body is not going to suffer.
Eating a marzipan at Christmas has almost no impact on our health, but if we did it every day, that is when we would do it wrong.
The fault is not the marzipan (or the food we want), but rather it is ours for not knowing how to give it the time, place and frequency that it needs in our diet.
We return to the example of the grandparents;
they ate cakes at weddings, birthdays, etc. but it was not usual to have a sweet for dessert every day.
We have become too sophisticated and, in exchange, we have lost.
What do you think of the fashion of the 'cheat days'? In a well planned diet,
s
are not necessary
.
We all have moments where we are going to consume foods that cannot be the norm in our daily dishes.
It is that search for the famous balance that we have already talked about with the name that best suits you.
Are we doing it wrong?
No, it is not a sin to eat anything.
We do not need any treats or tricks when it comes to eating, when what is really important is
the proportion and the planning
of what we eat, which is precisely what we want to teach with this book.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
nutrition
FitnessFive Keys to Lose Weight Without Starving or Dieting
WellnessHow to make your diet really work
Easy recipeHomemade croquettes feast on its International Day
See links of interest
2021 business calendar
Real Madrid - Getafe, live