The Best Scoring Daily Nutritional Foods For Optimal Health

A healthy life is largely determined by a healthy diet. A healthy diet would comprise of a variety of food that are the best scoring daily nutritional foods on your plate.

The first step to eating healthy is cutting out junk foods and processed foods. The second step is eating raw foods as much as possible, and cooking all your meals from scratch. In order to ensure the healthiest diet possible, incorporating as many of the best scoring daily nutritional foods into your diet would be the most sensible course of action to take. Remember, a healthy diet may help protect you against heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer.

Twenty of the Best Scoring Daily Nutritional Foods

Our nutritional requirements are obtained through a number of foods. Most importantly, by eating the best scoring daily nutritional foods, you can go a long way towards maintaining your health. Essentially, the key is to balance your eating habits in such a way that your body gets the daily recommended nutrients it needs.

Research into the best scoring daily nutritional foods have come up with a list whereby the top foods are given a nutritional score. The higher the score of the best scoring daily nutritional foods, the more likely they are to meet your daily nutritional requirement. Do remember, though, that they need to be eaten together with other foods in order to make up your total daily nutritional needs.

Scoring works from one to a hundred, with 100 being optimal.

Best Scoring Daily Nutritional Foods

Nuts and Seeds

A Harvard study on nut consumption found that people who had different types of nuts in their diet every day, lived healthier, longer compared to those who did not. Both nuts and legumes, whether fresh or raw, are considered seeds, as the term seed refers to an embryonic plant that grows in a hard or semi-hard outer covering.

Nuts, including legumes and seeds are rich in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats as well as omega-3 fatty acids. These are known to reduce your risk of cardiovascular issues. They are also an excellent source of potassium, magnesium, calcium, and antioxidants. These best scoring daily nutritional foods also have strong anti-inflammatory properties.

Nuts may also have the following health benefits:

• May improve your cholesterol levels by lowering bad LDL cholesterol and increase good HDL cholesterol levels.
• May reduce incidents of blood clotting because of the omega-3 content.
• May be of aid in controlling glucose levels while lowering insulin levels in people who have prediabetes.
• May help prevent irregular heart rhythms due to the presence of omega-3 fatty acids
• May ease blood flow by relaxing constricted blood vessels. This is because these foods are high in arginine, an amino acid that is used in the manufacture of nitric oxide in your body that plays a role in blood vessel constriction and relaxation.
• May help you control the portion size of your food. This is because of the high fat, protein, and fiber contents in nuts.

List of seeds, nuts, and legumes that are on the list of best scoring daily nutritional foods include:

Ocean Produce

One of the best scoring daily nutritional foods in your diet would be seafood. Various studies indicate that seafood has certain nutritional elements that are either not present in other, ‘regular’ foods or have higher quantities of certain nutrients, like amino acids, vitamins, polyunsaturated fatty acids, trace elements, and minerals. These nutrients help the body to grow, maintain a healthy brain and nervous system. Seafood are also found to play a role in fighting cancer. For these reasons, seafood should be on your list of best scoring daily nutritional foods.

The list of various ocean products that are on the list of best scoring daily nutritional foods includes:

Herbs and Spices

Herbs and spices have always been part of the best scoring daily nutritional foods since time immemorial. These are widely used both in food and in medicine as herbs and spices have immense medicinal properties. Besides enhancing your food’s flavor and aroma, they are also capable of protecting you against numerous health conditions.

Evidence suggests that herbs and spices possess a huge range of beneficial properties. These include antioxidant, glucose-lowering, cholesterol-lowering, anticarcinogenic, anti-inflammatory, and anti-tumorigenic properties. Among the many and varied bioactive constituents that are present in herbs and spices include tannins, alkaloids, compounds that contain sulfur, flavonoids, polyphenols, phenolic diterpenes, and vitamins.

Herbs and spices on the list of best scoring daily nutritional foods include:

Fruit and Vegetables

According to research, a diet rich in fruit and vegetables has numerous health benefits and are recommended as one of the best scoring daily nutritional foods. They help you lose weight as well. Because they are relatively low on the glycemic index, they could also help mitigate blood sugar spikes that often lead to feelings of hunger.

There are approximately nine families of fruit and vegetables. Each has hundreds of different compounds that could potentially play a beneficial role in maintaining good health. Fruits and vegetables, in addition to supplying your body with numerous vitamins and minerals, also contain phytochemicals. These act as phytoestrogens, anti-inflammatory agents, and antioxidants while having other protective mechanisms. By eating a large variety of fruits and vegetables, you can ensure that your body gets the nutrients it needs for optimal health.

Amongst the many health benefits associated with fruit and vegetables are included:

• Cardiovascular health
  Studies show that intake of fruits and vegetables is linked to a reduced risk of cardiovascular problems and stroke.
• Blood pressure issues
  Various studies indicate that an increase in fruit and vegetable intake, leads to a lowering of blood pressure, both diastolic and systolic.
• Diabetes
  Numerous studies have ascertained that certain fruits and vegetables could potentially lower your risk of diabetes. Fruit juices, in particular, however, should best be avoided by patients with diabetes as they are concentrated and their high fruit sugar content could potentially raise your blood sugar levels.
• Your vision
  Lutein and zeaxanthin present in fruit and vegetables could potentially protect against cataract formation. A diet rich in fruits and vegetables may also help protect your eyes against macular degeneration.
• Cancer
  Studies conducted in recent years have found a strong correlation between the occurrence of cancer and, fruit and vegetable consumption. Although a higher fruit and vegetable intake does not necessarily decrease your risk of dying from certain types of cancer, it may play a large role in cancer prevention. Interestingly, one study shows that a diet high in fiber during adolescence and young adulthood reduces your chances of contracting breast cancer by up to 12 percent. A diet rich in leafy greens and lettuce, as well as onions, may also protect against stomach, lung, throat, mouth, and esophageal cancer, while tomatoes may help protect men against prostate cancer.
• Gastrointestinal issues
  The high fiber content in fruit and vegetables could calm the symptoms associated with irritable bowel syndrome and relieve constipation.
• Weight issues
  Certain non-starchy fruits and vegetables could increase your likelihood of losing weight over a period of time. This does not, however, mean you should increase your total amount of food per meal. It means eating the same amount of food but replacing those foods associated with weight gain, e.g. white bread, with those that promote weight loss.

As mentioned earlier, these best scoring daily nutritional foods help the body with numerous vitamins and minerals. These fruits and vegetables also contain phytochemicals. As a result, besides their protective mechanisms, these foods function as phytoestrogens, antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents.

Fruit and vegetables on the list of best scoring daily nutritional foods include:

Best Scoring Daily Nutritional Foods May Support Your Immune System and Inflammatory Response

Your body’s immune and inflammatory responses are closely related to how your body deals with stress. This response, known as the NeuroEndoMetabolic (NEM) stress response, is governed by your Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis and results in your body’s preparation to fight or flight under stressful conditions.

During times of stress, your immune system is activated so that a threat could be dealt with. This coincides with inflammation in the targeted area. At the same time, the adrenal glands are activated and it increases cortisol production to fight the inflammation. With continued stress, however, your inflammatory response increases. This, in turn, puts more stress on the body, resulting in a cycle of increased cortisol production and a corresponding increase with regards to your inflammatory response. The result may be catastrophic for your general health and wellbeing and may lead to you developing one, or several, health conditions that may seem totally unrelated.

Health conditions commonly associated with this type of scenario include, amongst others, heart issues, diabetes, asthma, cancer, arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease, anxiety, depression, constipation, diarrhea, and irritable bowel syndrome.

Although there are many factors that could contribute to the dysregulated inflammatory response, one of the main contributors is diet. According to research, a diet that is high in sugar, starch, saturated fats, and trans-fatty acids while being poor in natural antioxidants, fiber, and omega-3 fatty acids may activate your immune system. This means that essentially a lack of the best scoring daily nutritional foods in your diet would result in the production of proinflammatory cytokines that would in turn trigger the activation of the immune system. This will reduce the production of anti-inflammatory cytokines and increase cortisol production. A prolonged cortisol production would lead to the symptoms of adrenal fatigue.

Setting Things Straight

It is important to note that making lifestyle changes and incorporating healthier food choices are vital for good health. A diet comprising of the best scoring daily nutritional foods would help you to heal your body from the effects of stress for a prolonged period. Excessive cortisol levels due to overactive adrenal glands have harmful health consequences like chronic inflammation. If you suffer from a health issue relating to inflammation, incorporating the best scoring daily foods into your diet will give your body the vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids it needs to combat inflammation.