According to a recent study, 77 percent of individuals choose items at restaurants based on taste, and 44 percent choose based on hunger satisfaction.
Only 20 percent of survey participants choose an item based on its nutritional value.
Part of the reason Americans tend to look less for nutritional value in menu items rather than taste and hunger satisfaction is price - according to the survey, 54 percent of respondents acknowledge that eating healthy at restaurants is costlier than not.
Additionally, 57 percent of respondents acknowledge that they are spending less at restaurants this year than last year because of the economy.
The importance of nutrient-rich foods falls short when it comes to the understanding and awareness of how these foods effect health.
Since most people are not eating enough of these foods, health care costs will continue to be an issue as a compromise in good health rises.
The way to combat poor health or declining health in America is to eat more nutrient-dense foods.
What are these foods specifically? Simply put, fruits and vegetables.
But most Americans are not getting enough of them in their diet.
Fruits and Vegetables Most Important for Good Health With health care becoming more of an issue due to rising costs, the most important step individuals can take to reduce the burden of expensive doctors visits, costly drugs, and overpriced treatment plans, is to include more raw, whole food fruits and vegetables in their diet each and every day.
The nutrients contained in fruits and vegetables are the most effective for the prevention of sickness and disease.
Naturally, decreasing the occurrence of sickness and disease would lower the costs of health care.
While it is difficult to control the costs of providing health care - doctors, drugs, diagnostics, hospital stays - it is not difficult to take steps to help in the prevention of health problems.
The easiest step is to reduce processed foods, fast foods, soft drinks and similar items that stress the body, while adding instead more fruits and vegetables.
This one action could be responsible for saving not only costs and the burdens put on families for expensive medical care, but also save the quality of life that so many people seek.
That is, a higher quality of health.
Most studies agree - a diet consisting of foods from nature really can fight disease.
Processed foods make us obese, yet they continue to reign in the American diet.
According to David L.
Katz, DL, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP, Director, Prevention Research Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, "we have many changes to make if we are to move away from diets that come from assembly lines.
" Dr.
Katz says, "That we are what we eat is as irrefutably true as it is inscrutably hard to see.
Just as we extract lumber from trees to build houses that don't resemble the woods, so we extract nutrients from foods to replace the cells we turn over each day by the millions, or to construct the growing bodies of children.
What we eat matters".
So choose fruits and vegetables over those foods that 'come from assembly lines' and watch as your health, weight, and wellness improve.
If you find that you have a hard time eating the minimum recommendation of 9-13 servings per day, The Health & Wellness Institute recommends you add a nutritional supplement that has nutrients from the whole foods.
Choosing just one or a few vitamins will leave out the hundreds of other nutrients that exist in the whole food, and those are important for your health and wellness too.
Instead of an overhaul of our Health Care Plan, we need to overhaul our lifestyle so we all become healthier.
That would save not just our bodily health, but our fiscal health too.
Just a simple change in dietary habits can make all the difference.
Start today.
Only 20 percent of survey participants choose an item based on its nutritional value.
Part of the reason Americans tend to look less for nutritional value in menu items rather than taste and hunger satisfaction is price - according to the survey, 54 percent of respondents acknowledge that eating healthy at restaurants is costlier than not.
Additionally, 57 percent of respondents acknowledge that they are spending less at restaurants this year than last year because of the economy.
The importance of nutrient-rich foods falls short when it comes to the understanding and awareness of how these foods effect health.
Since most people are not eating enough of these foods, health care costs will continue to be an issue as a compromise in good health rises.
The way to combat poor health or declining health in America is to eat more nutrient-dense foods.
What are these foods specifically? Simply put, fruits and vegetables.
But most Americans are not getting enough of them in their diet.
Fruits and Vegetables Most Important for Good Health With health care becoming more of an issue due to rising costs, the most important step individuals can take to reduce the burden of expensive doctors visits, costly drugs, and overpriced treatment plans, is to include more raw, whole food fruits and vegetables in their diet each and every day.
The nutrients contained in fruits and vegetables are the most effective for the prevention of sickness and disease.
Naturally, decreasing the occurrence of sickness and disease would lower the costs of health care.
While it is difficult to control the costs of providing health care - doctors, drugs, diagnostics, hospital stays - it is not difficult to take steps to help in the prevention of health problems.
The easiest step is to reduce processed foods, fast foods, soft drinks and similar items that stress the body, while adding instead more fruits and vegetables.
This one action could be responsible for saving not only costs and the burdens put on families for expensive medical care, but also save the quality of life that so many people seek.
That is, a higher quality of health.
Most studies agree - a diet consisting of foods from nature really can fight disease.
Processed foods make us obese, yet they continue to reign in the American diet.
According to David L.
Katz, DL, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP, Director, Prevention Research Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, "we have many changes to make if we are to move away from diets that come from assembly lines.
" Dr.
Katz says, "That we are what we eat is as irrefutably true as it is inscrutably hard to see.
Just as we extract lumber from trees to build houses that don't resemble the woods, so we extract nutrients from foods to replace the cells we turn over each day by the millions, or to construct the growing bodies of children.
What we eat matters".
So choose fruits and vegetables over those foods that 'come from assembly lines' and watch as your health, weight, and wellness improve.
If you find that you have a hard time eating the minimum recommendation of 9-13 servings per day, The Health & Wellness Institute recommends you add a nutritional supplement that has nutrients from the whole foods.
Choosing just one or a few vitamins will leave out the hundreds of other nutrients that exist in the whole food, and those are important for your health and wellness too.
Instead of an overhaul of our Health Care Plan, we need to overhaul our lifestyle so we all become healthier.
That would save not just our bodily health, but our fiscal health too.
Just a simple change in dietary habits can make all the difference.
Start today.
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