Sit down and plan your meals

A well-balanced meal plan adequate in nutrients and calories should be an essential part of our lives in our golden years.

One kind of food we can add to our diet and which will keep us healthy is fibre. Studies have shown that fibre is important in keeping our bowels functioning well. It lowers blood cholesterol and possibly reduces the risk of colon cancer. It also slows down the absorption of carbohydrates into the blood stream, so that the glucose in your blood doesn’t increase quickly after a meal.

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Fibre can be found in oatmeal, legumes, apples and citrus fruits. There are several ways that you can include fibre into your diet. Some of these include:

• Adding nuts and seeds into your stir-fry
• Starting your day with a high fibre cereal
• Making it a point of duty to eat loads of vegetables and fruits every day.

We all consume fat on a daily basis, let’s look at some facts about the fat we consume:

• Fat insulates our bodies against cold and cushions the skin, bones and internal organs.
• Fat also makes food to taste good; however if we eat too much fat it can lead to obesity and heart disease.

We have the saturated and unsaturated fats. Saturated fats are usually found in food items like eggs, meat, butter, cheese, palm oil and ice-cream.

Unsaturated fats are found in vegetable oils such as peanut, olive and canola. This kind of fat lowers LDL cholesterol while maintaining HDL cholesterol which is the good cholesterol. The unsaturated fat is considered a better choice than the saturated fat.

Vitamins and minerals are very important to our health, they are essential nutrients that our body requires on a daily basis. They help the body transform carbohydrates, proteins and fat into energy.

Minerals are naturally occurring inorganic substances required by the body. Calcium, iron, zinc, sodium, potassium are all examples of essential minerals that the body needs to function properly.

So it is very important for us to have a meal plan that combines a variety of food that will help us meet our daily requirements of vitamins and minerals.