Food for Thought: A smart diet today for a healthy body tomorrow

With my birthday just around the corner, it's hard not to think about getting older, and consequently, my own mortality. In each of my classes, I hear statistic after statistic about different digestive diseases, and how likely I am to get them, if I don't properly care for myself.

Some of these ailments seem more prominent than ever, yet despite the rise in digestive illnesses, there doesn't seem to be an increased awareness regarding the importance of eating healthy and exercising regularly.

I know that it isn't always easy to make healthy choices when it comes to food, but here are a few small ways that can help you make a difference in your diet, in hopes of achieving an overall healthier lifestyle.

1. Limit your salt intake
At some point, everyone craves salt. I, especially, crave salt late at night, or right after I eat something sweet. While salt is an essential component of our diets, sometimes we can overdo it.

Why does salt have such a bad rep? Well, the consumption of sodium increases the risk of something called hypertension (a.k.a. high blood pressure). By hardening and tightening the arteries, which results in an increase in pressure on one's blood to travel from one area of the body to another, this can lead to all sorts of circulatory and cardiovascular problems including heart attacks and strokes.

Hypertension can be found in people of all ages, so it's important to reduce your salt intake, and therefore reduce your risk. Some ways to lessen the salt in your foods include looking for low-sodium soups and snacks.

Make sure you read the labels on these products, and pay attention to the percentage of how much sodium you are consuming daily; ideally, the average person should not ingest more than 2,400mg (this amount can often be reached just by eating out at a fast food restaurant, or having a single bag of salty chips).

Another way to ensure that you are not bingeing on sodium, is to take care when you add salt to your fresh or cooked foods, for personal taste. While there is no need to keep things bland, it is important to watch the amount of salt you are adding to make sure you don't overshoot the daily recommended value.

2. Watch your good and bad fats
There are some fats that are actually good for you; my personal favourite being olive oil. I love using a teaspoon of olive oil on my salad, steamed veggies and/or garlic bread.

Helping to lower cholesterol levels in your blood (which prevents cholesterol build-up in your arteries), olive oil is a great alternative to butter, and other higher-fat oils.

The fats to watch out for are found in pastries and deep-fried foods. While I love a good pastry, and even catch myself eating a few French fries now and then, the trick is to make sure that you are not eating them all the time.

So, the next time you get a craving for something fatty, try sticking to olive oil instead, or even eating a baked crumble with fruit, rather than a donut or something equally fattening.

3. Avoid heavily processed foods
As you already know, I am not a huge fan of overly processed convenience foods, so I'm sure it's no big surprise that one of my health tips this week is to try more basic ingredients; this is mainly because of the preservatives, colourings, chemicals and other additives found in processed and ready-made meals. Unfortunately, to most food manufacturers, flavour is more important, than health benefits.

The typical person buys foods that are easy to prepare and taste good, without giving much thought to their nutritional values. Meanwhile, a whole world of natural foods exists that will guarantee you a well-rounded nutrient intake, not to mention that because they don't contain any of those nasty chemical additives, your body will be better able to break them down, and absorb all of the benefits that these foods have to offer.

So live well, eat well, and make the effort to secure a healthy future. Put in your body now what you would like to see from your body in 10 years; every little bit helps to make a difference.