Health

The main concern for family health is diet. Eat too little and a person usually becomes ill. Eat too much and the same happens. Eat the wrong foods or miss out certain foods and again the person becomes ill.
One problem is that the human body is very tolerant of not getting a proper balanced diet. Over time a person may feel unwell, start to be tired, not have enough energy or develop mental or physical problems.

You cannot even assume that eating a balanced diet will give you the correct mixture of vitamins, proteins, etc. The food itself may not include enough vitamins, etc. Then the cooking process may remove much of what is there.

What is a balanced diet?

A balanced diet basically needs to contain sufficient amounts of vitamins, carbohydrates, proteins, fats, fibre etc to suit the age and lifestyle of the person being considered.

Vitamins
Essentially these are chemicals required by the body, the different vitamins effect different parts of the body
Carbohydrates
We get most of our carbohydrates from starch in our food
Proteins
Required for growth and energy
Fats
Fats contain elements that we need

The dilema for many families is ensuring a balanced diet for the family without having to spend extra money. And lifestyles these days do not allow people to spend a lot of time geting this right!

Diet would appear to influence children's behaviour. I have seen children drink orange juice or eat coloured sweets and go completely wild. It is probably not the food itself but the colourings, preservatives and flavours added to the food. Interesting studies from several youth institutions show how the behaviour of the inmates can be controlled by changing their diet!

Health as an adult is influenced by their diet as children! A really unpleasant statistic is that the current generation of parents in the UK is the first one where the children, on average, will die before their parents! The diet of the younger generation is clearly harming them. There is something wrong with it. This is not the place for such a discussion and there are clearly other factors involved as well, such as not taking enough exercise, or smoking or drinking too much alcohol! What parents can do is to limit the 'bad' foods and teach their children how to eat healthily.

Some vitamins help children achieve at school

Omega 3 oils have a reputation for helping children to do better at school. The kids seem to calm down and to be able to concentrate better. Which of course is exactly what the schools want! I understand that quite a few private schools insist that the children take omega 3 oils everyday! Some people claim that Omega 3 oils can increase IQ levels in children, I have not seen studies to show that they do or they don't!

Do people need vitamins?

Some doctors say that most people do not, others are not quite so definite. The important point is that eating balanced meals may be all that people need to do. However many people are clearly not eating balanced meals and therefore they are not receiving their daily dietary requirements. This point appears to be missed by those doctors who simply say 'eat proper meals and you don't need extra vitamins'!