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.

The solution – they will make the food for you according to healthy, low fat, low carbohydrate guidelines, and will deliver the prepackaged food to your home. It takes the guessing, measuring, counting and preparing of the food out of the equation. All you have to do is eat their food, supplement it with fresh fruit and vegetables and lose the weight.

Both diet plans are almost the same and they guarantee that you will lose the weight if you follow their regiment.

It works well if you do as they say and don’t “sin” by snacking on additional foods. The problem arises when you realize what you getting and how much it costs.
The portions are very small. They say this is the right amount you should be eating, but your stomach, used to much more food in a single day, might tell you otherwise. Theoretically you should be able to keep away hunger by adding vegetables but when you are at home, by your refrigerator, what is there to stop you?

Maybe the price. It costs about two hundred of dollars a week to have three meals a day delivered. If you are a busy person who doesn’t have time, or doesn’t like to cook, this is a perfect solution. Just pop the package in the microwave and you have a balanced meal that is good for you, and will make you lose the pounds. So you won’t get bored both companies have big enough menus you can choose from, diversify the meal and eat only the things you like.

The question is how long are you willing to eat foods out of a container? No restaurants while on the diet, no eating dinner with friends. You have to stick to what they give you or the moment you go off the plan the pounds come back very quickly. You have not learned anything new and haven’t changed the way you eat.

So, as a quick fix, it works well. For the long run and for eating healthy for the rest of your life (like the other diets suggest) it doesn’t work at all. You need to work out on Balanced Meal instead !