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Perhaps one of the most frequently used words we hear today is diet and not so much nutrition. With a plethora of diets available, we tend to get carried away by the 'diet' wave and nutrition is lost somewhere in the horizon. You could choose from Atkins Diet, Zone Diet, Weight Watchers diet, Slim Fast diet to the various single-food diets like cabbage soup or grapefruit diet. Perhaps we are focusing more on 'diets' than 'nutrition' and we have completely lost track of what the 'diets' may be in terms of 'nutritional value'. But then, are these diets really working? If it did, America perhaps would not have been the fattest nation in the world with compounding rates of diabetes, hypertension, and other chronic and life threatening ailments embracing the nation. As diets become popular with the society, it is nutrition which is taking a back seat. So what, you may ask, is a diet?

Diet is wrongly understood by most people as a set of rules which guide you to monitor your intake of foods to maintain or gain a slim body or lose weight. In reality a diet is a set of foods which you take to supply the body with the essential nutrients so that it can function optimally. A balanced diet would consist of vitamins, minerals, fiber, antioxidants and enzymes which improves the energy levels and overall quality of life and can have a positive impact on your mood, eyesight, memory, memory and extend your life span in a healthy way. In the absence of a good and balanced diet, your immune system gets weak, blood turns thicker, heart capacity of pumping blood deteriorates and you become the breeding ground of a host of diseases, which can sometimes be life-threatening.

the other area where most people are confused regarding their food intake is when they look for the wrong things at the nutritional levels. They look for calorie count, fat grams and information on serving size. Usually people forget to look at the quantum of nutrients in the labels like A, C, D and E, as well as calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc and folic acid. Though this type of information appears at the bottom of the labels, it does not impact buyer choice. Perhaps the most important thing to look for on a nutritional label is the actual ingredients which it contains. It may contain just 200 calories but check out from where the calories are originating from. Watch out whether you are consuming large quantities of corn syrup and sodium phosphate or preservatives like sorbic acid or sulfur dioxide?

It is important to remember that nutrition comes from primarily vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. And a nutritional diet would consist of these elements definitely. Foods which you get from the earth are rich in nutrients for instant dark leafy vegetables are richer in calcium than milk and whole beans. Whole grains offer you large amounts of iron.

If you shift your focus from diet to nutrition, perhaps you would lead a healthier life.