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Fitness Team’s views on Treats v Nutrients

Posted on 26th Mar 2020

 

Mark, our Fitness Team Manager, has written an article (shared on Instagram) about how to make sure your snacks and treats tick the nutrition boxes...

 

A treat in healthy clothing



Those of us that take our health and fitness seriously will maintain our routines throughout this current crises, and perhaps be even more mindful of attempting to avoid unnecessary calories, especially for those who usually hold down more physically taxing jobs. Nutrients are more important than ever, and your choice of ‘healthy eating’ should be an educated one.

 

We’ve spoken about the essential nutrients previously. These include protein, essential fatty acids, vitamins and minerals with the addition of fibre. These nutrients come from a good variety of natural unprocessed foods and should be the foundation of our diets. It is these nutrients that support our immune system. You’ll have probably read somewhere recently of the benefits of vitamins like C and D3 and minerals like zinc. Although these are by no means cure all’s, if you are deficient your immune system may be less efficient.

 

You can increase your intake of energy/carbohydrate rich foods such as potatoes (white or red), rice (white or brown) etc if you are managing to stay active and exercise or currently a valued key worker who needs all the energy they can get.

 

For the rest of us staying healthy should be priority, but its still worth pointing out that not all ‘healthy snacks’ are particularly healthy. There are smoothies, flapjacks, energy balls and all sorts of sweet tasty snacks that are promoted as high protein health foods when in fact they usually contain relatively low protein but have high carbohydrates/sugar content along with plenty non-essential fats. Perfectly fine if you’re active and at your optimal body weight, but if you’re locked-down binging on Netflix thinking that your healthy snack is doing you good, think again.



Common sense still prevails; exercise more, then by all means eat more, or exercise less, stick to nutritionally dense foods as opposed to calorie dense foods, and treat tasty, carby snacks as occasional treats.

 

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