What is your food habit?

Malaysian Food Pyramid

(http://www.nutriweb.org.my/MDG/Malaysian-Food-Guide-Pyramid-English.jpg)

One may encounters a thought, saying how boring a nutrition education could be. Some of us may never even take a look at the food guide pyramid adv that had been loyally stuck on the wall of the canteen since our primary time in school. Some of us may never even take a look at it, to even realize it was merely there including me. However, since I have that strong nutrition awareness in me especially now, I feel like I need to walk the talk. FYI, I am taking a nutrition course in one of the local university in Sabah.

So, what is really a food guide pyramid? Generally, it is a guideline for us on how many serving we should consume in a day. Before I study nutrition, I never really care about how many serving I should take in a day, I don’t know how to read the nutrient fact on the back label of the processed food, I don’t know that oily food is a bad fat food. Now, I know a lot about nutrition and I love it. I love it when I apply it during my younger age. What we are now, is the preparation for the future. If you eat healthily, exercise regularly, u’re gonna have a long life in the future. Same like the bank saving analogy, save money now and be rich later. Hehe.

Back to the food guide pyramid thingy, the first base of the pyramid is carbohydrates. As a Malaysians, majority of us eat rice every day. So, one cup of white rice is considered as 1 serving. Based on the Malaysian dietary guidelines, it is recommended that we consume at least 4 serving of carbohydrate in a day. Tapi, takkan la mau makan rice saja in a day kan. U may want to take other carbs food like bread, cereals, mee goreng et cetera. So to me, it is fine to consume oat/cereal for breakfast, rice for lunch, kueh for hi-tea and fried mee for dinner. 4 serving kan? It is the standard serving for each one of us, 4 serving a day. We need carbs for energy!! Even if u need to lose weight, don’t cut your carbs intake. Try different type of carbs that has lower calories.

Next major number of food we should consume is fruits and vegetables. I love love love love this group of food. There so many good, nutritious and benefit of fruits&vege to our body. It makes u look healthy, fresh and pretty too. And it’s really yummy !!!  It is really really important to take fruit at least 2 serving in a day and 3 serving of vege in a day. Even if u don’t like vege, u need to replace ur unfavorable vege with other type of vege. For example, if u hate green leafy vege (I know most of the people who dislike vege is because of its bitter and leafy texture like) u may want to replace it with other type of vege. There are so many types of vege in the market, u have fruit vege like tomato and pumpkin, u have tuber vege like potatoes and even bean plant vege like bendi. So, think positive and find the alternatives! For fruits, there is no harm to consume more than 2 serving of fruit tho. But I suggest u people don’t take vitamin C supplement. Get yr vitamins directly from fruits and vege which is much more natural, organic, cheap and yummy! Based on my understanding, supplements may sometimes increase/decrease the other nutrients that u may already had it enuf and may complicate your body system. Because fyi, one vitamin C does not only contain vitamin C, it may have other types of nutrient which u may already had it enuf.  Even if you are about to take supplement, make sure u’re dealing with a nutritionist /physicist before u buy it.

            Third base; milk products and poultry. Drink milk people. I know how uncommon it is for Malaysians to drink milk especially teenagers. You never know when u need it. Remember the susu kotak that we got from the government during our primary school? U shud have drank that instead of giving yr other friends. That was one of the nutritionist ways of promoting milk intake on during our younger age. I’m glad I drank mine, and my friend’s. susu kotak. Haha. No wonder I am way taller than my friends haha. Just kidding. Based on FGP, we are advised to drink at least 1 cup of milk in a day. We really need milk la, nanti osteoporosis o later age.

Next, poultry,fish et cetera. These are a protein group of food. Same with milk. One reminder, these kind of food are the best source of protein especially lean meat such as chicken breast. Tapi if u eat the skin sama ja macam u eat fat kan. So don’t eat the skin, eat the chicken breast meat. It’s good! Even if u’re about to eat it, constaint yrself from doing it! Don’t eat kfc!! Hehehe. For the food serving, u may want to check the FGP.

Lastly, bad bad bad group of food that u should avoid from eating it every day. Mostly, semua yang sedap sedap, paling sedap punya makanan ialah makanan yg paling banyak calories and fat. U shud consume food that is less in sugar, less in salt, less oil. And there u go, a good healthy body to live long.

            So, my conclusion is, eat good/variety of food. Don’t diet, it never works. Seriously. Exercise and make it a habit. U will appreciate it in yr late age. So I guess I need to stop writing now. I think this will be the longest post of mine. Lol. Ok bye.

Do you know why mum keeps nagging us to eat vegetables?

Mums always know what's best for their child. They always give us good things that we sometimes take it for granted. For example like eating something that doesn't suite our taste. My mum used to nagged me to eat more vege when i was a little, she said that i need to eat it to grow up and become healthy.  She was right, look at me now, i'm tall, i'm healthy and i have quite a good skin. The only vege that i can accept during that time was cabbage. I disliked sawi during that time because to me the texture was kinda lembik and i kinda hate the bitter taste of it. However, for cabbage, there was a crunchiness every time when i ate those compared to other vege. I used to hate eggplant too but now after i learnt how nutritious it'd be to our body, i started to take it and love it till now. 

Source: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/75364993735838274/

Do you know that various kind of vegetables&fruits bring different function to the system in our body? The darker the the leaf, the better it'd be to our body. 

I learnt about carotenoid through journals recently, so this is just gonna be my two cents on what i have just studied. 

Carotenoids is in the lipid group which means that they contain fat on it. However, since they are only a derived lipid, there'd be only a small amount of fat on it. They're like a good source of fat to our body.

Carotenoids are actually a fat soluble pigment that can be found mostly in vegetables and fruits which is responsible for the colour of the particular plants. Some of the most common form of carotenoid are β-carotene and lycopene. β-carotene can be found mostly in fruits like carrots or anything in orange colour plants. They act as a precursor of Vitamin A which is good for our visual, growth rate and embryonal development for the pregnant women. 

As for the lycopene, it can be mostly found in tomatoes or any other red fruit or vegetables. I like lycopene because it contains some natural antioxidants properties on it which would be very good to my skin because i tend to have a lot of concern on my skin. On top of that, lycopene's antioxidant properties may also reduce the risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis. An effective antioxidant helps to remove the free radicals from the body system either by reacting with them to yield harmless products or by disrupting the free radical chains. Or in simplest sayings, it means that the antioxidant fights against free radical and protect the cell structure from damage. 

Source: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/448671181597680191/
Look at how beauty this tomato is. Eat this more and you'll get your porcelain skin.

For your information, carotenoids do not only function on fruits and vegetable particularly but also in other forms. For example, the carotenoid helps the ripening of fruits, turn the leaves from green to brownish colour during autumn and also helps the harvesting of light energy during the photosynthesis of plants.

Since our body cannot synthesize carotenoid, we need consume it from plant sources. It is advised to take it from natural sources so that it'd be naturally absorbed into our body system. However if you are under certain condition of diseases, you are advised to take it in supplement form. 

So guys, eat more colourful fruit or vege if you wanna stay healthy!! 

Random weekend

Have you ever feel of craving to do something?  Not food but something you're dying to do but due to some circumstances you can't do it. I have, and that 'thing' was baking. I was one of the Foodbytez Cafe crew in my faculty.  Since the day where I&J taught us how to bake muffins and egg tart to be sell in my faculty, I've been dying to try it myself at home. I wanted to satisfy this craving last week but due to some financial and time problem, I couldn't make it. And finally today, I could bake some! Luckily my dad was being so kind heart today, willing to help me getting all those ingredients at supermarket today. Thanks dad! Inspired with what they've taught me ,I learned that , to bake, there's a lot of things to be considered. It was not as easy as you thought it is. And not as hard as it look too!

You have to be accurate with every grams of flour, sugar etc (well at least your approximation is almost reaching the accurateness!), you have to stir the mixture in only one direction and you have to separate the ingredients with different bowl for some recipes. Thats the things I will bare in my mind everytime I bake. But just to let you know, my faculty did not teach me how to cook, i dont learn cooking here, I only learn the fact and science about food here. It was the activity that taught me this .

Today, at first , I wanted to bake some chocolate muffin and egg tart, but after googling for some recipe, I changed my mind. I baked some chocolate moist cake instead. It was my first attempt, and lemme tell you, it wasn't bad at all :P I can bake dude!(finally), now I'm thinking of opening a restaurant one day. bwahahhaha. ..

So here is my humble chocolate moist. 

Baked with love :)

The recipe you can check at http://mylovelyfamily-ana.blogspot.com/2012/03/resepi-kek-coklat-moist.html 

Happy baking y'all! But mind the calorie, chocolate would cause you alot of calories if you take too much! :)