Nutrition For Family

Are you one of this country’s thousands of homemakers and trying to do a blue-ribbon job of feeding a family well? If so, you know that your task is vital to family health and important to happiness, and it is not easy. You have a 4 point food program:

– To serve enjoyable meals.
– To keep your family well nourished.
– To practice thrift when needed.
– To save time and energy where you can.

Nutrition is the science that deals with food at work – food on the job for you. Modern knowledge of food at work brings a new kind of mastery over life. When you – and your family – eat the right food, it does far more than just keep you alive and going. The right food helps you to be at your best in health and vitality. It can even help you to stay young longer, postponing old age. An individual well fed from babyhood has a more likely chance to enjoy a long prime of life. But at any age, you are better off when you are better fed.

Food’s three big jobs
1. Food provides materials for the body’s building and repair. Protein and minerals (and water) are what tissue and bone are chiefly made of. Children must have these food materials to grow on, and all life long the body continues to require supplies for upkeep.

2. Food provides regulators that enable the body to use other materials and to run smoothly. Vitamins do important work in this line, and minerals and protein too.

3. Food provides fuel for the body’s energy and warmth. There is some fuel in every food.

Body’s needs, A to Z
From vitamin A to the mineral zinc, a list of nutrients – chemical substances that the body is known to require from food – would total more than 40. And there may be some not yet detected. You can put nutrition knowledge to use without being introduced to all of the body’s A to Z needs. When daily meals provide sufficient for the following key nutrients, you can be reasonably sure of getting the rest.

Protein
Protein was named from a Greek word meaning “first.” Nearly a hundred years ago, it was recognized as the main substance in all of the body’s muscles and organs, skin, hair, and other tissues. No simple substance could build and renew such different tissues, and protein has proved to be complex and varied.

Protein in different foods is made up of varying combinations of 22 simpler materials called amino acids. If need be, the body can make its own supply of more than half of these amino acids. But the remaining amino acids must come ready-made from food. And to get the best use from these special ones, the body needs them all together, either in one food or in some combination of foods.

The best quality proteins have all of these especially important amino acids and worth-while amounts of each.

You get top-rating proteins in foods from animal sources, as in meat, poultry, fish, eggs, milk, cheese. Some of these protein foods are needed each day, and it is an advantage to include some in each meal.

Next best for proteins are soybeans and nuts and dry beans and peas. When these are featured in main dishes, try to combine them with a little top-rating protein food, if you can.

The rest of the protein required will then come from cereals, bread, vegetables, and fruits. Many American-style dishes, such as meat and vegetable stew, egg sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, cereal and milk, are highly nourishing combinations. For in the body’s remarkable chemistry, the high-grade proteins team with the less complete proteins in many companion foods and make the latter more useful than if eaten alone.

Read Also: Nutrition For Kids

Featured Image: Good Food for Kids
Source by Liza Othman