Those that suffer from various digestive problems will greatly benefit from the supplement as poor absorption of fat in the tract can lead to a vitamin E deficiency.
There is an assortment of foods that contain vitamin E and such foods are a great way to add the health beneficial element to our diets. Nuts, seeds, spinach, turnip greens, mustard greens and chard are just a few of these natural ingredients. Try adding the above to breakfasts, lunches and dinners. They will add great flavour as well as improve your health.


If you are unable to source vitamin E from food or sunlight then you should most definitely invest in a health food vitamin supplement. The many vitamin E supplements on the market contain one single form of the vitamin in the shape of alpha-tocopherol. However, when sourcing the vitamin naturally, you will be giving your body access to a family of vitamins instead of just the one element.
Other good sources of vitamin E include he likes of parsley, kale, papaya, olives, bell pepper, kiwifruit, tomato, blueberries, broccoli and brussel sprouts.

All of the above are easy ingredients to add to meals but also easy snack options. Taking fruit, seeds and nuts to work is a healthy alternative your body will appreciate and one that will do wonders for your current health!

1. You need to drink at least 8 glasses of water a day they said.

- Not such a good advice as far as nutrition is concerned. If you live in a very hot climate you have to make sure you are getting enough water to compensate for what you lost through perspiration. But in normal circumstances – drink when you feel thirsty.

- Any kind of liquid is good to keep the water levels in your body in check. What so much water does is dilutes your electrolytes and makes you feel full. You are advised to drink that amount if you want to lose weight.

2. Do not eat after 7 PM

– The French laugh at it and for a good reason. People live different lives on different schedules. Some work at night. There is no formula that fits all. It’s really about what you eat not when you eat it.

3. Eat as much chocolates as you want, it’s good for you.

- Wrong. The bitter chocolate that contains at least 70% of cocoa has health benefits. The regular milk or filled chocolate is good for your sweet tooth only. It has no health benefits.

4. Another idea that has been popular is that carbohydrates are bad for you and will make you fat.

- That is an idea that gathered speed in the 70′s when Dr. Atkins came out with his revolutionary low carbs diet by avoiding carbohydrates all together.

- Some carbs (as they are called) are indeed bad for you. Sugars, white rice, white flower, pasta are all heavy with simple carbs that get turned to sugar very quickly.

- When there’s excess, this carbs turned sugar will be stored as fat, probably around your middle section.

- There are a lot of healthy complex carbs you should eat and not avoid. Your body needs it. Eat beans, vegetables, fruit, brown rice and whole grain flower and it will take the body a lot of effort (calories) to break it down and won’t raise your insulin levels.

5. Another myth is that you don’t need dairy products after you’ve grown up.

- Look at the calves, they say. When they grow up they stop drinking milk and eat hey instead. Well, we are not cows and our stomachs and bodies work differently.

- We need the calcium that dairy products are full with, and we need the vitamin D they are enriched with to help the calcium be absorbed. Stay away from dairy products that are full of saturated fats (whole milk, sour cream, whipping cream etc.) and keep the ones that are low fat or fat free.

- Recent research showed that Americans, especially children, have very low levels of vitamin D probably because of sun blocks or because they hardly play outdoors. Doctors believe high levels of vitamin D help combat different kinds of cancers. So do make sure you are getting enough calcium to avoid osteoporosis.

6. Don’t eat more than one or two eggs a week is another idea that is rebutted.

- Yes, eggs have cholesterol but they also have a lot of proteins that keep you satisfied and not hungry for a long time. They have B vitamins, iron and minerals that our body needs. There is no risk in eating one egg a day, every day, if you are healthy.

The reason, scientist think, lies in the balanced nutrition the French consume compared with the American diet.

Americans eat meat in the morning, in the form of bacon, ham or sausages with eggs, another animal protein. They eat meat at lunch, when they are pressed for time and grab a hamburger (again meat and white flower bun) and they eat meat at dinner as well. All the while drinking coke and other sugar laden drinks.

The French eat croissants in the morning. They do not drink huge amounts of carbonated sweet drinks but they drink red wine which has, as it been discovered lately by the Americans, antioxidant and Resveratrol which is beneficial to the cardiovascular system and protects the body against tumors. On top that the Americans are more stressed and work harder and longer than any other nation except Japan.

Because of that, proper nutrition is of the utmost importance. Proper nutrition help in reducing the risk of illness, it improves the body’s immune system, it help us maintain optimal weight (optimal for our bodies that it, not for the pages of fashion magazines). It’s hard to get fit or exercise when you do not eat right and your body works twice as hard to muster the energy to break down harmful additives and not much is left as fuel for the muscles.

When we are eating a balanced and nutritional meals our skin looks better, nails grow stronger and hair becomes shinier. When we look good, we feel good, we are happier, and the brain is clearer. Our memory benefits, our vision gets better and over all we improve the quality of our lives.

Fruit are the perfect food, they say, the perfect nutrition. It requires very little energy to be digested and it fills the body with energy and ‘wakes up your brain’. It consists mainly of fructose, water and fiber – a perfect combination to digestive health. But do we know how to eat fruit the right way and get the most nutritional benefits out of it?

Fruit passes quickly through the stomach and is processed mainly in the intestines. If you eat fruit at the end of the meal, it will stay in the stomach for much longer than it needs and will start fermenting. This causes heartburn and a feeling of bloating and gas.

We should eat fruit on an empty stomach, as the first food of the day. The fruit passes through the stomach, releases fructose which turns to glucose very easily, giving you a boost of energy. The rest goes down and keeps the intestines busy. It’s the perfect nutrition to start the day.

Don’t be tempted to use substitutes in the form of canned or bottled juices. Many of them contain very little fruit juice anyway, and many beneficial vitamins are destroyed in the process of heating and cooling the juice.

If you’d rather drink than eat first thing in the morning, do your body a favor and invest in a juicer. Make your own, fresh, with no additives glass of juice that is full of vitamins and has the nutritional value of 3-4 servings of fruit.

Another trend speaks to the American way of life. Drinking cold soda while eating.
Wrong, says a recent e mail. We should take our cues from the oriental civilization. They drink hot tea during meals.

The fats we eat at the hamburger joint, the greasy French fries, get a cold wash from the soda. The fats solidify and make it difficult and longer to digest. If we drink hot beverages it would help to break down the fat and move it out of our system much faster.

Two adjustments that are not too difficult to make and may result in a better nutritional intake, and a healthier body.

Calories

– The amount of calories in a certain food is a way to measure how much heat will be released while burning that food. A man needs about 2,000 calories a day, a woman a little less depending on their activity levels. Calorie amount is given so we will know how rich or dense the food is so we can calculate how many calories we eat.

- When looking at the box it’s important to understand that the amount of calories written as information is sometimes for only one serving and not the whole box. You have to be aware of that and make the calculations.

Carbohydrate

– Sugars and starches and other elements the body needs and uses as an energy source. There are simple carbohydrates that break down easily and quickly into glucose and those are the ones we try to avoid. Complex carbohydrates take a lot of energy to break down and keep out bodies busy for a while longer.

Cholesterol

- Our body produces most of the cholesterol it needs to be able to build cells and make hormones. When we add cholesterol to our bodies it is accumulating in the arteries and sometimes creates blocks and cloths that lead to cardiac arrest.
Enriched foods –those are elements, such as vitamins, which are added to the food to compensate for what it lost in the manufacturing process.

Fortified foods

- those are elements added to the food that were never there in the first place. For example; added vitamin D in milk that will help in the absorption of calcium.

Dietary fiber

– the parts of a plant or vegetable that our body does not digest. It increases the bulk in our digestive track, fills us up and gives our stomachs a lot to chew on. You need about 25 gr. of fiber per day.

Daily value

– It is a calculated number, based on a diet of 2000 calories a day, that tells you how much of each ingredient, in percentage, the food contains. You need 100% of that ingredient a day.

High Fructose Corn Syrup

- Sometimes (quite often) used in foods instead of sugar. Just as bad as sugar if not worse.

Hydrogenated fat

– a process that turns liquid fat into semi hard one. The process creates Trans fats that are harmful and turn quickly to cholesterol.

MSG (Monosodium Glutamate) – it is a flavor enhancer, somewhat similar to salt. It may cause an allergic reaction in some people. This is why it has to be spelled out.

Potassium – a substance helping the building of muscles and maintaining healthy blood pressure. Found in generous amounts in bananas and nuts.

Saturated fats – Usually come from animal products and are not good for our bodies. Some vegetables as coconut and palm oil contain saturated fats as well, that harden in room temperature. No more than 7% of your fat intake should come from saturated fats.

Sodium – is what we call salt. Salt is needed in the body but in big amounts can raise the blood pressure and cause the body to retain water.

Sugars – different kinds of sugars are used in the manufacturing of food; fructose, glucose, sucrose, maple and corn syrups. They are added to the food to enhance the flavor and have no nutritional value.

Use this information to make an educated decision about the kinds of food to buy and what to serve your family. Balancing all the elements and avoiding those that are harmful is the first step to healthy nutrition.

With so many diets on the market and gyms in every corner, the question that keeps coming up is, why? Why is this generation so overweight when we have all those new exercise techniques and sport research to maximize the exercise effectiveness?
The simple answer is nutrition. People just do not know how to eat right.

Eating right doesn’t mean skipping meals. It does not mean avoiding certain foods all together. A Balanced nutrition means you should have a little of every food group; proteins, carbohydrates and fat. Balanced nutrition has to include all three, plenty of water, and vitamins and minerals. But on that a bit later.

The objective of a correct nutrition is to supply and maintain the body with the elements it needs for healthy normal function. Thus, if you avoid completely one of those ingredients you are not getting the nutrition you need.

Many articles have been written about the Atkins diet for example. Dr. Atkins believed that the fat content in our food is not the reason why we are overweight. In his opinion the culprit is the carbohydrates. Under his guidelines you could eat all the fat and proteins you like, but eliminate the carbs almost completely.

People did lose weight on his diet, but did they become healthier? No, they became slimmer and sicker. The huge amounts of animal protein they were consuming contributed to a dangerous rise in cholesterol levels, which is an unwanted outcome.

Nutrition is not about weight but about health. A balance diet has to include a lot of vegetables and fruit, which do contain carbs. A balanced nutrition has to supplement all the body systems and keep them in optimal working order.

Since most vegetables and fruit in our modern, hurried world are not grown organically or without pesticides, herbicides or hormones, fruit and vegetables do not contain the amount of vitamins they used to. Our society lives on processed foods that are easy to eat, and fast to digest but they do not supply the body with the vitamins it needs.

Recent research in the United States showed that most people, especially children, have a deficiency in Vitamin D. It might be caused by an unbalanced nutrition or it might be caused by not enough time in the sun. Now that we have discovered how harmful the sun is to our skin, we cover ourselves with clothes and sun blocks. We stay indoors during daylight hours in offices and closed spaces where the air is forced in by machines but the sun doesn’t shine. Now the doctors recommend loading ourselves with huge amounts of Vitamin D to make up for the loss.

This would have been avoided had we kept a balanced nutrition that includes fresh produce, meat, fish, grains and some outdoor activity. Good nutrition is the most important element to a healthy, happy and active life.