Nutrition 4 Dummies

Hi there, foodies! Today I give you Vocal's newest article edition: Nutrition for Dummies. I was a nutrition dummy four years ago when I started college at a DPD accredited university (Iowa State) and I'm still learning every day. As I looked back on my final year at school, I realized that it shouldn't take a four year degree to really understand nutrition, but it does. That's where I come in!

Nutrition can be incredibly confusing with all of the new information and sneaky marketing out in the big world of grocery stores and restaurants, but I'm here to give some basic tips to help you understand it better and be the healthiest you that you can be.

1) Every body is different.

There is no magic diet or strategy that will work for everyone, which is partly why nutrition is so difficult. Trial and error and listening to your body is a huge part of being healthy.

2) Beware of marketing strategies.

I plan on writing about this in a later post, but for now: do your research. Do not take labels as automatic truths. Look at peer-reviewed research articles to make your best decision on what is right for you. You do not need to be a PhD student to know the facts about nutrition.

Understand that companies want to make money. In order to make money, they may use poorly defined terms that don't really mean anything to make it seem healthier for you. My favorite example is "hormone-free" chicken. ALL chicken is hormone-free, as is required by the USDA, but marketers knew that placing this label on the package would make their brand more appealing.

This is definitely not the only example, so keep your eyes open and don't believe everything you read or hear.

3) Quit doing juice cleanses.

Please.

4) Say "no" to the diet culture.

Dieting can be harmful both mentally and physically. Being healthy is about having a balanced lifestyle that can be sustained all your life. Low-carbohydrate diets, for example, can deprive your body, especially your brain, of energy and nutrients needed for healthy function. Once your body is re-introduced to a normal amount of carbohydrate, it essentially hangs onto it because it doesn't know when it will be able to have it again, and you regain the weight you lost. This "weight-cycling" can harm your metabolism and cause slower weight loss velocity after repeated dieting attempts.

5) Don't give up.

This stuff can be really confusing! It takes a lot of time to learn about your body, but it's worth the time. There's a lot of information out there and it's hard to organize, but I hope that I can play a role in helping you guys sort it out.

Look for more articles by me to go more in depth about different nutrition topics! Email me to let me know what topics you want to hear more about or questions you have.

Much love, Ellie.

Sources:

Blackburn GL, Wilson GT, Kanders BS, Stein LJ, Lavin PT, Adler J, Brownell

KD. Weight cycling: the experience of human dieters. Am J Clin Nutr 1989;49:1105–9.

FSIS. (n.d.). Meat and Poultry Labeling Terms. Retrieved December 18, 2017, from https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/food-labeling/meat-and-poultry-labeling-terms/meat-and-poultry-labeling-terms