Snacking is a convenient way to suppress appetite and obtain nutrients between meals, but most snack foods are highly processed and full of sugar. The difficulty in finding a healthy and appealing snack food is a challenge that can easily ruin an otherwise healthy diet. Because of its nutritional value, convenience, and great taste, beef jerky is an excellent snack that can help to solve this problem, but as with most foods, there are a number of factors to consider in regard to quality and health.

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Like most people, you’re probably conscientious of the amount of calories that you eat. Perhaps you even count how many you consume each day. If so, what would you do if you discovered that the calorie data you’ve been using is unreliable?

Researchers from Tufts University analyzed the calorie content of a variety of supermarket and restaurant foods and found themselves asking the same question. In many cases, the actual calorie content of the food varied considerably from number of calories listed by the manufacturer or restaurant. This has significant implications for people who count calories to lose or maintain weight.

The entire basis of calorie counting is dependent on accurately assessing and adjusting one’s daily caloric intake based on their caloric needs. People looking to maintain their weight will generally consume about the same amount of calories that they need for the day, and those who want to lose weight will typically try to eat slightly less. Inaccurate calorie data could easily cause someone to consume more calories than intended and result in them gaining weight instead of losing or maintaining it.

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Almost everyone knows that doing more exercise and reducing calorie consumption will promote weight loss. But if weight loss is this simple, then why are so many people failing miserably despite their desperate efforts? While it may be a result of laziness for some, it’s more often a result of calorie restriction and exercise being used inappropriately.

Despite how many people make drastic but temporary changes to lose weight, long term success is highly dependent on making less drastic changes that are permanent. It’s common for people to be overzealous with calorie restriction or exercise, and although it may initially be effective, these practices are eventually likely to lead to fatigue, a raging appetite that can no longer be resisted, compromised health, and an eventual return to old habits. This is why so many people regain the weight they’ve worked so hard to lose and continue to repeat this cycle until they eventually give up and choose to accept being overweight.

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It’s extremely common to see recommendations for specific foods that will improve energy, endurance, strength, recovery, or some other physical aspect, but is such advice worth paying attention to?

I recently read an article in Tennis Magazine with the subtitle “Six foods that could make or break your workout.” Although I think that some of the recommendations in the article are good, they’re also an excellent example of why so many people are confused about healthy eating.

In general, I typically don’t like advice that recommends a certain food for a specific benefit because I think it neglects the most fundamental reason why it’s important to follow a healthy diet. Whether the benefit of such a recommendation is improved energy, increased capacity for physical activity, or faster recovery, these are nothing more than characteristics of optimal health that are achieved from a well rounded healthy lifestyle. Unfortunately, many people are experiencing these types of issues because their health isn’t what it could be, and the idea of a single food resolving the problem is a compensation that rarely works and fails to address the true problem. Although certain food choices can provide benefits beyond the basics of optimal health, trying to obtain these benefits without actually having optimal health is like buying high performance tires for a car with a malfunctioning engine. Basic health should come first!

With this in mind, here are the six foods that can supposedly make or break your workout.

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Although diet has an obvious association with body weight and health, you may be surprised by the possibility that it can also have a significant influence on your character.

While it might initially be difficult to believe that your diet can have such a strong influence on your behavior, it’s well established that adequate nutrition is critical to proper brain development and function. Based on this, it should be reasonable to expect that altered brain function can influence your thoughts and emotions, and in turn, influence the actions that define your character.

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Many people mistakenly believe that weight loss and healthy eating require torturous effort. Fortunately, this isn’t the case, and with the right perspective, pursuing either goal can be a pleasurable process.

Two very important factors that most people fail to consider in regard to weight loss and health is how they perceive themselves and how they perceive the food they eat. Perception has an undeniable influence on physiological function, and because of this, the negative connotations that people develop toward themselves and their diets can promote weight gain and have an undesirable impact on their digestion and health. As such, approaching weight loss and healthy eating with a positive, rational, and inspired perspective is just as critical to success as choosing nutritious foods. The following 7 tips will help you develop this perspective.

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Good health is dependent on properly digesting and absorbing the food we eat, and in turn, this ability is dependent on the availability of digestive enzymes. Although you’ve probably heard of digestive enzymes, chances are that your diet is deficient in them and that your potential for optimal health is being compromised as a result.

Enzymes are proteins that facilitate chemical reactions. Nearly every biological function of a cell depends on enzymes, and as such, they’re critical to our health. Similar to the theory that mammals are limited to approximately 1 billion heartbeats, it’s also believed that we have a limited capacity for enzyme production. Based on this theory, anything that puts unnecessary demand on the body to produce enzymes, such as a diet that’s deficient in them, could compromise health and shorten lifespan.

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Organic food is an important part of a healthy diet, but because of its growing popularity, large corporations are taking advantage of the opportunity and are deteriorating the reliability of the USDA’s organic certification requirements in the process.

The USDA’s organic seal is the most widely recognized and trusted marker of organic foods. For this label to be used on food products, they should be free of unnatural ingredients, should not be genetically modified or irradiated, and should be from crops that are grown without chemicals and livestock that are raised without antibiotics or hormones. Despite the many benefits of certified organic food, it’s unfortunately not always as healthy or pure as you may think.

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It’s common for people to experience drowsiness after the large turkey dinners that are often a part of the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Although most people attribute the drowsiness to the tryptophan in turkey, this is unlikely to be the cause. Despite this somewhat negative perception of tryptophan, it’s actually an important nutrient that has considerable benefits.

Tryptophan is an amino acid that’s needed by the body to assemble proteins that are involved in numerous biological functions. Tryptophan is also an essential amino acid which means that it cannot be synthesized by the body and must be obtained through diet. When tryptophan is not consumed in adequate amounts, it can lead to a number of issues including mood disorders.

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Although the importance of essential fatty acids has become a mainstream topic, many people still don’t know exactly what they are or why they’re important. As a result, it’s common for such people to be consuming them in imbalanced or inadequate amounts and be wasting money on supplements that they don’t need.

As with most widespread health information, the food industry takes full advantage of the benefits and popularity of essential fatty acids by using them to market foods that are highly processed and unhealthy. Because of this, many people are consuming these critical fatty acids from less desirable sources and may be compromising their health as a result. To avoid this, it’s important that you know what essential fatty acids are, what they do, and what the best sources are.

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