When you know about healthy living, you know how to stay fit and healthy! You know about nutrients and where to find them, and how having good personal hygiene helps you to fight microbes. You know that exercise keeps your body fit and muscles like your heart strong. Healthy living also means you are sensible about things like sunshine, which is very good for you but can also be very, very bad. You also know all about how bad smoking is for your body! Healthy living is easy, when you know how - click on the links to find out more!
Nutrition is the word used for the goodness you get from the food you eat. Your food contains nutrients called carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, minerals, fats and water. The nutrients you eat help your body to grow and stay healthy. Some foods are more nutritious that others – it is important to know what foods are good for you so that you can give your body the nutrients it needs to work at its best!
Protein is the most important nutrient that your body uses to keep itself in tip-top condition. Your body uses protein to make sure your muscles, all your organs and your immune system grow and are repaired when they need to be. Protein is found in some of the foods you might like best – chicken, beef and other meats, fish, eggs, dairy products, nuts, beans and seeds.
Carbohydrates are fuel for your body – they give you energy! There are two types; starches and sugars. Starch is found in bread, cereals, pasta, potatoes and rice. It gives you energy slowly but it lasts a long time. Sugars give you energy quickly but it doesn’t last long, especially the processed sugars from foods that aren’t very good for you like sweets and fizzy drinks. For a quick burst of energy, it is better to eat foods with natural sugars like grapes and raisins instead!
Fats help to keep you healthy and are not all bad! They give you energy, protect your organs and help to make food taste nicer. You do have to be careful though – fat is concentrated energy and gets stored in your body! You need to balance the energy you eat with the energy you need, so it is best to eat fats in small amounts. Try eating healthy fats from nuts, fish and vegetables. Look for the best kind – unsaturated!
Your body needs vitamins to grow, to develop and to help it work as well as it can. There are lots of different types of vitamins and they each have a different but very important job in keeping you healthy. Some vitamins are stored in your body until you need them but, others are not, so you need to replace them often.
Minerals are very important in helping your body to grow and develop. You can find minerals in the ground but you don’t need to eat rocks to stay healthy! You can find minerals in lots of different fruits and vegetables so it isn’t too hard a job to eat as much as you need! Your body gets lots of different minerals like calcium and iron from foods like milk, meat, fish, fruit and vegetables.
Water doesn’t contain any nutrients but without it you cannot survive! Water makes up a lot of the human body; in fact, nearly 3/4 of an adults total body weight is just water! It has many really important jobs like bringing nutrients and oxygen to cells all over the body but, your body loses water very quickly when you sweat or go to the toilet so you need to drink plenty, every day! Do you know all the different jobs water has?
