I guess you could say that I am a foodie considering I go to culinary school. After taking my first nutrition class, my eyes were undoubtedly opened to how bad some of the things we eat in our everyday life actually are. More times than not, we unknowingly put mass amounts of sugar, saturated fats, and carbohydrates into our bodies. Do you really know how many grams of sugar are in the Venti Strawberry Acai Refresher you get at Starbucks every morning before class, or how many grams of saturated fat are in the Domino’s pizza you ordered at 3 am last night has?
To answer these rhetorical questions, that drink has 30 grams of sugar and the pizza has 32 grams of saturated fat. Most of the time we do not even realize what we are putting in our bodies. After the fall trimester, I had put on about ten pounds and I took it upon myself to lose it during the first half of the winter trimester. Even with minimal visits to the gym, I lost all the weight because I changed my diet completely. During my culinary labs, I was eating healthy foods and not the processed food from the dining hall every day. Changing my diet was all I needed to take off ten pounds because I paid more attention to what I was eating instead of just eating whatever was closest available to me at that time. Instead of a Starbucks run every morning for breakfast I had a pre portioned bag of Special K Protein or a Reduced Sugar Luna Bar. For lunch, I switched out a dining hall meal for a meal I made in labs that I could control the portion size and have plenty of vegetables. For dinner, I switched out a burger and fries from City Burger for a sandwich with low-fat meats and whole wheat bread. With those simple changes, I lost the weight in three weeks.
The choices I needed to make were easy to change, but sometimes it was harder to eat with my friends. Altering my diet meant eating somewhere different from them or asking them to eat somewhere I could eat too. Even though it can be hard to make the decision, I know, in the end, this is the right choice for me as a person.
Though I am back to my “pre-college” weight I continue to eat this way because it is better for my body. These food choices came with researching what products would be the best replacements for me, based mainly on calories, protein, saturated fat, and sugar.
While doing research about different foods I came across a TED talk called Teach Every Child About Food, hosted by Jamie Oliver, a British celebrity chef and nutrition advocate. While talking about the importance of food education, he pointed out something that many people probably do not realize that America’s top accounts for death every year are preventable diet-related diseases. So wait, let's take a second to think about this. What does preventable mean? AVOIDABLE! It is something that can be completely fixed if you take the time to think about what you are putting into your body. Most of the reason people make the wrong food choices is because they do not fully know what they are eating or what the benefits of making the healthier choice are. I know for many it is more than just ten pounds to lose, but why let your life pass by and death approach when you could live a long and healthy life?
Eating healthy is worth it! It does not mean you have to eat a plain salad for every meal, some of my favorite foods are nutritious and taste great too! So please, coming from an individual who is studying the ins and outs of this, take the time out of your day to day life to create a longer one for yourself. Knowing what you are eating is the first step to making a healthy choice. I challenge you to spend one day to look at the nutritional facts of the things you eat throughout the day and see what you are really putting in your body.
