Diets and Eating Habits Affect Body Functions and Moods

In this age of popular quest for how shall we then eat, we are bombarded with nutrition information of all sorts. Somehow that makes it harder and confusing to know what to believe, whom to trust, for with so many conflicting reports and wild claims, the truths are not always clear. If you become skeptical, you have the right. But you still have to choose your food. You've got to examine and decide for yourself what are the reliable nutrition information to enable you to eat more properly and healthily. Scientists tell us, people eat due to physiological hunger, a sensation that occurs when human body's blood sugar begins to drop and the stomach contracts. But people eat for unconscious and emotional reasons as well. One reason cited by Dr. Richard Kozlenko, a physician trained in biochemistry, is "mouth hunger: the feeling that comes when you see or smell a cake in a shop window and your mouth begins to water." Some people crave the taste of food in their mouths even after they've eaten much more than is necessary to meet their bodies' physical needs. Too often, Kozlenko says, the dictates of emotion overpower the subtle cues from within signalling that the body has had enough. "Emotional directives", Kozlenko states, "often lead to poor eating habits that, in turn, affect the normal functioning of the body and whether we feel alive or listless."

Some signs of poor eating habits are: skipping breakfast, drinking too much coffee, sipping our diet lunch of low-calorie soda, overeating on weekends, snacking junk foods, overdoing salt, sugar, additives and fat intake, consuming too many calories with too few nutrients, etc. Aside from not valuing what goes into our mouth, those gorging, continual snacking, eating at the wrong times, eating too fast or too much, even chewing improperly result to: bloating or "gas", to obesity, to poor digestion that interfere with the assimilation of nutrients and even makes it easier for food to be broken (e.g., poorly digested protein is converted into toxic amines).
There are serious suspected links between poor diets and eating habits and the leading causes of death in our society today: heart disease, cancer (particularly of the colon and breast), strokes, diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver, and hypertension (high blood pressure).
Close correspondences are also observed between one's diets and eating habits and one's emotional makeup and well-being. That changing one dimension of eating behavior, a person can drastically alter the way he or she feels physically. For example, eating more complex carbohydrates, being bulky and take along time to digest, may give a person a full feeling. Try this: eat dinner an hour earlier each day, and you may give your eaten food more chance to metabolize before you go to bed, and see how it affects your sleeping mood.
Our eating behavior is much directed by the so-called "emotional investment" we attached in food. And this is strongly influenced by media, by those high-powered, enticing ads for highly refined, chemically laden substances, instant processed meals, good tasting junks, great variety but nutritionally deficient foods. And by the current obsession for a beautiful body which virtually ignores biological reality.
We are food-conscious people more than before but emphasis is placed on what gives immediate sensual pleasures, and on having a body that looks good; rather than giving importance on what truly goes into the body and its effect to its functioning. We need to take a more prudent look at our diets and eating habits, for there are growing evidences to the axiom that we need to EAT RIGHT TO LIVE RIGHT!

from: Lead Magazine