Nutrition is the Key To Looking Younger
So, our cousins in Wales say that the way to look younger is to eat better. I wholeheartedly agree! If you want to look younger there’s no better miracle cure than eating the right foods. It’s the cheapest, least painful and more permanent way of keeping yourself young-looking and energetic.
Sarah Drew Jones from the Western Mail encourages her readers to ditch the botox, the wrinkle creams… and forget about cosmetic surgery, but instead to change their diets for the better. Here are some hightlights from the article:
“By eating a balanced healthy diet with optimum intake of essential nutrients, limiting alcohol to sensible levels, exercising moderately and regularly and quitting smoking completely one has a fighting chance to delay the onset of degenerative disease and stay mobile, healthy and energetic well into the seventh age.”
So how can what we eat affect our ageing process? In the fight against ageing, antioxidants are the superheroes of wellbeing. “Antioxidants are vitamins like vitamin C but also things like bioflavenoids which fight free radicals, and free radicals are what damage our DNA and all sorts of other things in our bodies,” says Jane Franks, a nutritionist based in Powys. “So you need lots of antioxidants in your diet.”
Jane recommends dark-coloured fruit and veg such as blueberries, black grapes and red peppers for an anti-ageing boost. “The brightly coloured fruit and vegetables are the ones that contain the most of these flavenoids because they are what give it the dark colour,” says Jane. “So ‘try to eat a rainbow every day’ is good advice.”
“Nature in her wisdom balances things really well - for example green leafy vegetables contain the perfect balance of calcium and magnesium,” says Jane. “You need calcium for healthy bones, but you need the magnesium in order to absorb the calcium. If you get your calcium from a pill you aren’t getting the right amount of magnesium to go with it.”
Of course a diet based solely on fruit and vegetables would be a little dull. Luckily there are all sorts of fun things that are good for us too. “Chocolate can be good for you in moderation, although I must qualify this by saying that milk chocolate has absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever,” says Jan Walker. “The health-giving compounds (phenols and flavenoids) are present in plain dark chocolate. The bonus is that plain chocolate is lower in saturated fats and refined sugar.”
Probably the biggest surprise when it comes to eating yourself young and healthy is that fat can actually be good for you. “Fats can generally be divided into ‘good’ and ‘bad’,” says Jan. “Bad fats are any hydrogenated i.e. heated to high temperatures, such as in deep fried foods, crisps and snack goods, margarines and spreads that are solid at room temperature, together with animal (saturated) fats.”
“You want a diet that is rich in fruit and vegetables, that has appropriate amounts of carbohydrates like wholemeal breads and rice, and we also need protein which can be found in many sources but especially meat and fish.” Fad diets can cause you to miss out on nutrients that are important.
Very, very sensible advice indeed!