The main building blocks of good nutrition that people are always talking about are fats, carbohydrates, and proteins. Let’s briefly describe what these nutrients are.

Protein is found in plant and animal sources. Animal proteins include meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and dairy products. Plant proteins include beans, nuts, breads and cereals.

Carbohydrates are the body's main source of energy and they generally come in the form of starches and sugars. Common starch sources of carbohydrates are wheat, rice, potatoes and corn. Sugars are also carbohydrates because they provide energy in the form of calories, but they don't provide any additional nutritional value. Although sugars do not provide nutritional value, complex carbohydrates such as whole grains, fruits and vegetables are valuable to the body because of the vitamins, minerals and fiber they provide.

Fats are also a valuable source of energy to the body and serve many other necessary functions as well. Saturated fats, sometimes referred to as ‘bad fats,' contribute to the production of cholesterol and LDL. Meat and poultry, whole or reduced-fat milk, and butter are main sources of saturated fatty acids. Trans fatty acids act like saturated fatty acids in the body. Trans fatty acids come from processed vegetable oils like margarine and shortening. Unsaturated fats, also known as ‘good fats’ , help lower LDL levels and decrease risk of heart disease. Different forms of unsaturated fats include monounsaturated fatty acids, which mainly come from vegetable oils like canola, olive and peanut and polyunsaturated fatty acids, which come from safflower, sunflower, corn, and flaxseed oils. Polyunsaturated fatty acids are also the fats found in seafood.

There are many different opinions around as to the best combination of these all important nutrients. It is not my intention here to go into all the various points of logic regarding the ratios of protein, carbohydrates, and fats. I simply want to point out that I feel you should be cautious of any diet plan that recommends an unusually high or low ratio of any of these items. This type of diet is often referred to as a “fad diet”. Although these diets can sometimes help a person to lose weight quickly, the results are very often short lived. Even worse, some fad diets have been found to be dangerous to our long term health.

I am in the process of adding a number of pages of information regarding diets and nutrition to my site. If you are interested, check back periodically on my home page at Fitness After Fifty and click on the “Diets” tab.

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Online fitness coach Tom Manfredi is the creator of the site "fitness-after-50". He has a master's degree in exercise physiology and over 20 years of practical exercise experience.

This site is designed with the mature adult in mind. There is a lot of information available on the site for anyone looking to start or restart a sensible exercise program. Learn more by going to fitness-after-50.com

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