Vitamins and Minerals Vitamins and minerals are essential to the growth and development of your body. Receiving 100% of the recommended daily allowance (RDA) is important to developing your healthy lifestyle. Unfortunately, most foods today have been stripped of their nutritional value. Even fresh fruit and vegetables may have inadequate nutrients since the farm fields from which they are grown no longer contain the necessary vitamins and minerals. Packaged foods are even worse since processing almost eliminates any remaining nutrients. Therefore, you should supplement your diet with a good multi-vitamin to be certain you receive a full balance of vitamins and minerals. Key Point #10: Get the correct amount of vitamins and minerals. Take a multi-vitamin everyday.
Sources of Energy
Foods are comprised of one or more of these categories and are measured in grams. Each gram of fat, carbohydrates or protein has a predetermined amount of calories (or energy). Fat is the largest source of energy with nine calories per gram of fat. However, fat, as you will see later in this book, is not the most efficient source of energy and should be consumed in relatively low amounts. Carbohydrates and proteins have equal amounts of energy with four calories per gram. Your body uses these three types of energy to keep you going all day long. Since your body "burns" or uses each one of these fuels differently, it's more important to measure the composition of your calories, rather than your total calories. For example, if you eat 2000 calories per day, but 80% of those calories are comprised of fat; it's more difficult for you to "burn" those fat calories than if the same calories were carbohydrates. That's because fat calories are more difficult to access as energy once they are stored on your body.
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