31 Days off Your Duff {Day 5} - Nutrition Facts!

Oh boy, doesn't that title make you tremble with excitement?

Well, I'm pretty nerdy, so probably only a few of you will be as excited as I am by this post.

Recently, I was reading up on the wonders of B vitamins and all the natural energy they give you. I work very long days during the week and my sleep definitely suffers for it, so an extra dose of energy sounds great. Now I know people can take B vitamin tablets/pills, but I personally have never felt comfortable with those artificial forms of vitamins. I would much rather get everything I need from my food.

So, after looking for a site to give me lists of high B-vitamin foods, I came across Health-Alicious-Ness.com They have categories of vitamin, minerals, and nutrients that your body needs, along with comprehensive lists of the foods you can eat to benefit from these.

They also have a fun comparison tool, so you can type in whatever food you are looking up, and get the complete facts on it. (some foods are not on there list, and some are just under really specific names)

After looking at these lists, I realized I am severely lacking in B-vitamins. Luckily, I love making my own lists, so I organized all this information in a way that I want to use it. I can easily make sure I am eating my vitamins now!.

My Meal and Ingredient Lists

Here, for your enjoyment, are some samples of what I created using the data off of Healthaliciousness (sorry, my computer only makes tiny screenshots apparently. Clink on the link if you don't have super-powered eyes and need to see a bigger picture.)

Bigger Picture
Eat your Kale!

This first picture is part of my ever-expanding nutrition list.

-The actual foods are colour-coded by type
-The nutrients, if they match a special colour with another nutrient, should be eaten
 together because it helps your body in the absorption process
-If an ingredient's Vitamin A is written in red, that means it isn't the best form
 that vitamin comes in, sadly.

Ahhh I love lists. Next!

Bigger Picture
A simplified meal

This depicts a super-simplified dinner recipe. I did this in Microsoft Excel, so I ordered it to total my meals up for me. Now, clearly, this isn't enough for the day, but remember this is just from dinner. I can look and see that:

"Oh, I'm missing a lot of B2, let's see.... *checks ingredient list* I think I'll have yogurt(11) and banana(5) for breakfast, and a feta(14)-seaweed(9)-avocado(8) salad for lunch!"

That would bring my total B2 for the day up to 64% of the recommended value - not bad, not bad. Ribolflavin is a hard one to get naturally, but there are plenty of vitamins that I can eat the full 100% of each day.

So! Now that you are filled to the brim with information, get off your duff and go grocery shopping!