The basic concept of food and why we need it is actually quite simple.
Unfortunately, due to food processing and borderline criminal marketing, choosing what to eat has become confusing. We’ve lost our basic understanding of what food is, preventing us from making healthy food choices.
We’ve been sold the idea of miracle diets (keto, Atkins, paleo, weight watchers…) and the luxury of convenience. Artificial flavors and colours are added to give us the illusion of nutrients. Preservatives are added to provide the appearance of freshness. Finally for good measure, claims like ‘Low fat’, ‘0 Sugar’, ‘Low Carb’, ‘Gluten Free’ are plastered all over fancy packaging to deceive us even further.
Manufacturers are now required to include nutrition facts, but what do they even mean? If you don’t understand what you are looking at, you are not alone. Roughly 59% of consumers across the globe said they have difficulty understanding nutrition labels, approximately 7% of respondents said they don’t understand nutrition labels at all.*
I get it. Growing up, I didn’t think about nutrition ever. Food was something I ate for pleasure, not sustenance. TV dinners, Joe Louis’, and pizza pops were staples in my house. These convenient, sodium and sugar packed ‘meals’ and ‘snacks’ were obviously not the most nutritious choices, but they were new, fun, cheap, and addictive! The ingredients were listed but we didn’t really understand what we were reading. In Canada, standardized ‘Nutrition Facts’ labels weren’t introduced until 2003.
Now we live in a world of food transparency and instant information. ‘I don’t know anything about nutrition’ is no longer acceptable. We also shouldn’t claim to know everything about nutrition because even the world’s leading scientists can’t come to an agreement or definite conclusion.
What is food?
Beautifully defined by the oxford dictionary, food is:
“Any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb in order to maintain life and growth.”
It’s complicated.
Food is one of the most complicated sets of chemicals imaginable. Put it inside the ever evolving human body which contains some 60 chemical elements, and it gets crazy. How crazy? Thirty-seven quintillion or thirty-seven thousand quadrillion chemical reactions per second’ crazy. That’s not a typo. At any given second, there are approx. ‘37,000,000,000,000,000,000,000’ chemical reactions happening inside of us. Give or take a couple of billion…
Luckily, we don’t need a degree in nutritional sciences to eat better. We just need to understand 2 simple facts:
- We need food to live. Food makes our body work, grow, and repair itself
- Some foods are better for us than others. The food we eat affects the efficiency of the body’s processes.
Nutrition is simply how food affects the health of our body. Understanding what food is and how the body functions (on a VERY BASIC level), makes choosing the right meals much more digestible.
Our bodies cannot produce all of the nutrients it needs to function optimally, so we need to consume food to get those essential nutrients.
Food is broken down into 6 Essential Nutrients: Water, Protein, Carbohydrates, Fat, Vitamins & Minerals.
Macronutrients
Water, Protein, Carbs, and Fats are categorized as macronutrients (macros). To the exception of water, macronutrients provide energy. This energy is measured in calories.
Micronutrients
Vitamins & Minerals are micronutrients. They work together to create chemical reactions that allow the body’s systems to function properly.
Vitamins can be broken down by heat, air or acidity and are categorized by either water-soluble (vitamins we pee out) or fat-soluble (vitamins that can be stored in fatty tissues when in excess). Vitamins help release energy from the food that we eat, and protect us against diseases.
Minerals are categorized as major or trace minerals. Major minerals are used and stored in large quantities in the body. Trace minerals are just as vital to our health as the major minerals, but we don’t need large amounts. Unlike vitamins, minerals do not break down which is why most of the minerals in a human diet come from eating plants and animals or from drinking water.
So, what should we eat? Whatever we like that gives us enough macro and micronutrients.
GOOD SOURCES OF VITAMINS
GOOD SOURCES OF MINERALS
How many macro and micronutrients do we need to consume every day?
It depends on the food and water we consume and the way that we train.
So what’s with the percentage of daily value (%DV) that is included on nutrition labels? It’s a reference guide. Unless the label says otherwise, reference intakes are based on an average-sized woman doing an average amount of physical activity. Those %’s aren’t targets, they are just a rough ideas of how many nutrients and much energy (calories) we should be eating each day.
Daily reference guide for adults:
- Energy: 8,400kJ/2,000kcal
- Total fat: less than 70g
- Saturated fats: less than 20g
- Carbohydrate: at least 260g
- Total sugars: 90g (includes sugars from milk, fruit and vegetables, & added sugar)
- Protein: 50g
- Salt: less than 6g
Stop restricting calories!
Calories are an important part of the nutrition equation. Weight Watchers tells us that a calorie is a calorie. In some ways this is true. One dietary calorie contains 4,184 Joules of energy. If we burn more calories than we eat, we will lose weight, but restricting energy is a miserable way to lose weight. Calorie sources can have vastly different nutrients which will affect our hunger, hormones, energy expenditure and brain regions that control food intake. When it comes to fat loss, simply choosing better caloric sources can yield equal or better results. No counting calories needed!
Choosing fuel for our bodies.
Having too much of one major mineral can result in a deficiency of another. Let’s use salt as an example. Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride. Sodium is an essential nutrient required for various processes, including electrolyte homeostasis, neuronal activity, nutrient absorption, and muscle contraction.
How much salt do we need?
Not much. If we are exercising 30-60 mins/day, 5-7 days/week, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends not more than 2300 mg of sodium per day (~1 tsp/day) to replace the sodium lost in sweat.
However, athletes require more. If we are exercising regularly over 90 minutes a day, or in hot/humid conditions, replacing the salt (and other electrolytes) lost in sweat is important to maintain hydration and avoid cramping. There is no perfect amount for everyone. The baseline recommendation is 500-700 mg of sodium per hour but this increases upwards of 2000 mg + when there are heavy sweat losses (long runs/rides/races). Once we start paying attention to our bodies, we can start to recognize the effect of nutrient excesses or deficiencies in our bodies and supplement accordingly.
Issue: Salt overload
- Symptoms: intense thirst, nausea, vomiting, and weakness.
- Body’s Reaction: When the body senses that sodium levels need to be lowered, Calcium binds with excess sodium in the body and is excreted.
- Problem: you could end up losing needed calcium as your body rids itself of the surplus sodium.
- Fix: Avoid ingesting too much sodium through table salt or processed foods,
Issue: Salt deficiency (salt is in most food we eat, so this is unlikely)
- Symptoms: muscle cramps, headache, irritability
- Body’s Reaction: thyroid hormone production slows.
- Problem:sluggishness and weight gain as well as other health concerns. The problem worsens if the body also has too little selenium.
- Fix: Eat iodized salt and iodine rich foods such as seaweed, shrimp, and other seafood.
2-3 Hours Prior to Training
It’s recommended to consume half a litre to ¾ L of water and a sports drink that contains sodium and other electrolytes. (If you are a salty sweater, make sure your pre-workout meal or sports fuel also has salt). Also, no 0 calorie bullshit. Remember, calories are energy! You need energy.
During Training
Hydration – Aim to drink 4-6 ounces of water or a sports drink every 15-20 minutes.
Salt – The recommended amount of sodium depends on many factors, so start with 500 mg/sodium per hour.
Energy – Sports gels or gummies. 1 gel every 45 mins. Beware, too much of this type of food can cause digestion problems. (Most of us can’t digest more than 300 calories per hour while training). We like endurance tap. A mix of maple syrup, ginger and salt.
If we’re doing an activity where we can eat more readily, like hiking, trail running, or biking, we try to get our calories from food sources like crackers and salted nuts. These are also great to combat flavor fatigue and gut rot from all the sweet-heavy sports foods.
After Training
After our workouts, our bodies try to rebuild glycogen stores to repair and regrow those muscle proteins. Eating the right nutrients soon after we exercise can help our body get this done faster.
A post-workout meal with both protein and carbs will enhance glycogen storage and muscle protein synthesis. Consuming a ratio of 3:1 (carbs to protein) is a practical way to achieve this.
This athlete’s nutrition pyramid summarizes our thoughts on nutrition. We start with our macronutrient intake (Water, Protein, Carbs, and Fats). Then we try to add foods that have the most amount of micronutrients (Vitamins & Minerals). We are conscious of the energy we are burning while we train and we replenish our energy as needed with food & sports fuel. We try to get most of our nutrients from food, but depending on the food we are eating, and the duration and intensity that we are training, we supplement essential nutrients needed to maintain proper function of the body’s systems.
How we think about food, and why, when and how we eat (or don’t eat), gives us insight on what our bodies likely need to feel their best.
To start redefining your relationship with food, ask yourself these questions:
- What is my relationship with food like?
- Do I feel energized throughout the day?
- Are my systems (cardiovascular, digestive, nervous, musculoskeletal…) working properly
This was so informative. I will bookmark this and refer to it often. I also feel that nutritional requirements change as we age, and we can be unaware of the changes until it becomes an issue.
Thanks for a great article.
Thanks! Glad you liked it, Jacquie. We will continue to update it as we continue to learn more. You are right, our bodies are constantly evolving and our nutritional needs change along with it. Our specific needs vary, and it’s hard to know exactly what we need, but no need to over complicate it. Remembering the basics and just being aware of the changes happening in your body keeps you ahead of the game;)