Why you need to know if you are striking the balance in your feeding

It’s well known that excessive intake of food adds unnecessary weight and can cause chronic health challenges like diabetes, coronary heart diseases among other illnesses. Too little food intake is also problematic as seen in some individuals with muscle wasting, digestive tract problems among others. Whether you are a vegetarian or not, we always need to strike a balance in our feeding pattern. Most people prefer feeding on animal products like meat, milk, cheese, Yoghurt and until you are cautioned for any health challenge you will not know what and how to adjust your feeding pattern. Most people feeding on animal products usually present with overweight due to abundant increase of fats and oils from animal products. One of the key points to highlight here is cholesterol. Cholesterol is a fat and oil substance found in all animals that include human beings. Cholesterol is necessary for every healthy body. This is why moderate intake of dietary cholesterol is highly recommended, though it becomes a problem when low density blood cholesterol levels becomes higher and high density lipo-protein cholesterol becomes too low. In our bodies, we usually have cholesterol of animal products origin and the serum or blood cholesterol manufactured by our bodies. Cholesterol is used in the manufacture of some hormones and involved in digestion of fats within our body. It is only found in products of animal origin, this is why people with coronary heart illnesses, overweight or obesity are restricted to vegetative type of food. Overweight and obesity are risk factors derived from a dangerous form of cholesterol known as low density cholesterol (LDL). This type of cholesterol is of animal product origin and it’s the one that circulates in blood leaving plaques of deposits in our main blood vessels to cause coronary heart disease among others. Low density cholesterol transports cholesterol from the liver to other body tissues and it’s an important test in our daily routine medical check-ups. While High density cholesterol (HDL) transports cholesterol from the body tissues back to the liver. Fried eggs are another source of dietary fats and cholesterol. Fats are essential to our health; they perform important functions in the body as they transport all fat-soluble vitamins A, E, K and D to all parts of the body. Vitamins play a vital role in the immune system or body defence. People who feed on plant products also suffer health setbacks. While it is theoretically possible for a strict vegetarian an to thrive for the long term, most people who remain true vegetarians over many years tend to become deficient in nutrients, and often do not realize they are malnourished until they develop health challenges that are difficult to ignore. For example, in one of my internal medicine consultation practice, I had a patient who complained of developing cavities along his gum line despite regular flossing and brushing. His hair, once healthy looked thin and brittle. He complained of fatigue all time and when i carried out some blood workup realised that had an alarmingly high mineral deficiency. I also realised that he suffered these symptoms for a long time and unknowingly because he was very strict to avoid animal products for fear of health challenges posed by animal products. Based on what we have discussed above, we always need to strike a balance in our feeding patterns. It should be noted that cells that make up our bodies need healthy saturated fatty acids and healthy cholesterol to remain structurally stable. This is one of the reasons why strict vegetarians tend to develop problems in their gums, teeth, bones, skin, hair, and nails. Intrinsically produced cholesterol is not enough for most people to be optimally healthy and we always need to some moderate animal products. Dr Joseph Kamugisha is a resident oncologist in Jerusalem, Israel