Keep eating healthy food and doing beneficial sports moderately are essential to our health and lives, but how to know whether the food and sport are safe and healthy is problematic. We only know many foods are safe and nutritious, many sports are beneficial, and we could take care about safety when doing them, from our tradition; however, we should also know why is that, and how to know them by ourselves. Combining nutriology and many experiences in practice, we could know many foods we daily eat are safe and healthy. Alcohol (absolutely only good one, fermented from foods contains absolutely no toxic methanol which could cause blind and death) is healthy because it could help one to be happier after ingestion, its combination with meat is perfect since it could denature proteins, human body could recombine proteins that built up the body thereby. Additives may also be safe since they passed scientific examination about safety and health for people, but safe and healthy food must still be based on our traditional foods which are safe and healthy to eat. Healthy eating and beneficial sports could determine our health, taking care of safety as well.
Keywords: Safety and nutrition, Food and sport, Alcohol, Additives, Health
The progresses of science enabled us to use more materials to keep our food stay long, to be delicious or improve other qualities; however, it is necessary to know whether they are safe and healthy by oneself. What we daily eat are safe, we inherit our ancestors’ habits to live, including what to eat, but we didn’t know why, how our ancestors know they are edible? It seems Chinese medicine had a lot of answers to this; unfortunately, a great part of it failed to be inherited by people today, we only have modern nutriology, it is effective and developing.
Generally, there are six kinds of main nutrients people have to ingest everyday: carbohydrates, proteins, fats, mineral salts, water, and vitamins.
Carbohydrates are power source of human body’s activities, it provides energy by respiration with oxygen in human body, one has to eat a large amount of it every day, and people who have diabetes also have to ingest it every day even they must inject insulin to make up the normal functions of their pancreas.
Proteins to human body are like the parts that a vehicle consists of to the vehicle, human body needs them to build up its shape. Fats provide many essential materials to build up human body and maintain plenty of normal functions of the body, the development of brain needs some kinds of fatty acids which was obtained from fat ingestion. Both protein and fat could also be used as energy resource when carbohydrates are not enough therefor, the energy supplying function of fat could only be used when one was doing sport of intermediate intensity, such as swimming or long distance running which takes endurance, long time of aerobic respiration could consume fat to provide energy; however, short time movements would only consume sugar which was obtained from carbohydrates. Practice shows this is true, I once suddenly became fat when I was 20 because I thought too little, study should consume a lot of energy, but I didn’t, then I kept swimming 1500m every day two years after that and my body shape gradually recovered thereby. Many people can’t lose fat successfully just by eating less. Using protein to provide energy is a compensatory option, its efficiency is low and wastes the proteins one had built in body, usually such compensation is used only when the carbohydrates were used up, and it is not healthy. This should be true, I could feel it is tiring to exercise when I was starving, and the effect after such exercise is always not as good as when I didn’t get hungry but was enough long time after meal to exercise, to ensure the digestion had been finished before doing sports. I can’t get fitter as I usually felt after exercising, didn’t feel my strength, endurance or fitness got increased as usual. It is better to use sugar and fats to supply energy but save proteins from being burned to supply energy. Mineral salt and water are also vital materials for body’s metabolism and activities.
It is of course necessary to ingest all these nutrients which are basic to one’s health, so our meal always contains main foods which are carbohydrates at first, then some meat and vegetables dishes, sometimes there is also alcohol. Such meal could provide us sufficient basic nutrients as introduced above. Many traditional Chinese dishes are not only nutritious, containing these nutrients, but also delicious, such as fried soar and hot potato shreds, fried tomatoes with eggs, fried cabbage, fried shreds of meat and hot pepper, fried fish-flavored shreds of meat (there are only celtuce stem, black fungus, hot pepper and sometimes carrots fried with meat, no fish is contained), Beijing sauce fried meat shreds, pepper fried chicken dices, red burned meat, big-plate chicken, beef noodles, buns steeped in mutton, dumplings and many other carbohydrates, meat and vegetables dishes. Such dish uses many natural foods as condiments, e.g., salt and four kinds of peppers (hot, numb, black, and white), and could provide abundant proteins, mineral salts, fats and some carbohydrates and water to human. What’s the most important is that they are safe and healthy to eat as we Chinese eat them every day and they are also sufficient to people who want to build up strength. I’ve kept exercising for 10 years since I was 18, I only ate traditional foods and now I could swim 1500m or run 8km in once easily, I never ate nutrition enhancing food. I scarcely ate junk food, but feel I was more easily to get injured after eating junk food, each time my sprain happens exactly after I ate a lot of junk foods or beverages. Even my right foot once got intermediate sprain, the lockdown in three years had given me enough time to rest to recover it. It should be better and better after I could jump again; however, after I ate a lot of junk food, I got sprained again and have to rest until my feet are ok.
Alcohol definitely is healthy since it could help one to relax, get happier therefore healthier, one definitely would be healthier if ingesting meat with alcohol moderately since the total effect makes one happier; therefore, the only reason that could lower my nutritional condition is junk foods, which contain little nutritional materials and a lot of additives. As additives passed scientific examination and are ruled by laws of the country, maybe they are safe, it is just junk foods contain too less nutrients and can’t support the nutritional demands of my exercising and recovering, home-made meal is still safer and healthier.
Our traditional foods are safe and healthy foods stood the practice from our ancestors to us of at least thousands of years, foods should develop as how our science and technology are developing, but any safe and healthy food must also be based on them, and this is what does the word “develop” mean.
Nutrition consists of ingesting, digesting, utilizing, and metabolizing, and human body’s health could be determined by it as human body is a machine of nutrition. Ingesting and digesting provides sufficient and reasonable materials for the body it needs to keep life and health, and this is determined by what the person ate. We must eat safe and healthy foods to keep our lives and health; thereafter, we also must exercise moderately in proper ways to utilize the nutritional materials well. Same as foods, we also have many safe and healthy traditional sports inherited from our ancestors, such as long-distance running, swimming, football, and many other physical competing games. We just know doing them moderately could make us healthier, stronger, and better endurance etc., trusted our parents and teachers to practice them, and they truly could make us healthier, stronger, and better endurance, be good to us if we did them moderately in ways we like, and they won’t be harmful to anyone if we care about safety as well.
Having habits of doing sports moderately, which one must like, with eating healthily, one could have good nutrition to keep healthy by oneself, taking care of one’s safety at the same time. The development of healthy sports also must be based on our traditional sports. With scientific research in nutrition based on our traditional foods and sports, we could develop healthier and safer foods and sports based on our traditional foods and sports, and we could keep healthy by eating healthy foods and beneficial sports moderately.1,2
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The author confirms that this article content has no conflict of interest.
- 1. Ding Xiaowen, Liu Chunhong. Food Safety. China Agricultural University Press, 2016:pp.129-141.
- 2. Sun Changhao, Ling Wenhua, Huang Guowei, et al. Nutrition and Food Hygiene. People's Medical Publishing House. 2017:pp.140-160.
