The Effects of COVID-19 on Our Diets and The Effects of Our Diets on COVID-19
There's HOPE! We can beat this with more than just medicine.
Due to COVID-19, we have seen a major change in the diets of
Americans.
Because many restaurants’ dishes have high sodium, calorie, and
saturated fat and sugar counts, their foods tend to be on the unhealthier side.
However, since COVID-19 broke out in America, there’s been a major increase in
cooking and eating at home. This could be potentially very beneficial or very
detrimental…
Cooking from home opens up the opportunity for people to have healthier meals.
We
can keep track of the salt, sugar, and other ingredients that we’re adding into
our meals better than if we were to get these meals from a restaurant. Ideally,
we could be cooking with fresher foods, creating our own portion sizes, and be cognizant
of what we’re putting into our bodies.
However, it could be detrimental, as it’s more costly to buy
fresh foods and would require a person to go grocery shopping more often to
have a constant supply of these fresh foods.
This could cause many to look
towards more economical canned and highly processed foods that last longer and
store better. Spending more time at home could cause people to snack more
often, leading to an excess consumption of calories.
Time
wrote an article stating that
Americans have been getting ~21% of their calories from restaurants, and ~40%
of American adults are considered obese—having a BMI ≥ 30.
These positive/negative changes in our diets can have a major impact on how our
body will handle the symptoms of COVID-19.
Poor diets can lead to obesity,
cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cancers, and more. These
chronic illnesses have been seen to exacerbate symptoms of COVID-19, leading to
increased risk of death. If you have any of these chronic illnesses or are at
risk for developing them, there are ways to manage and prevent them to
ultimately increase your chances to beat COVID-19 —changing your diet could be
the first step!
Diet changes to manage chronic illnesses, decrease excess body weight, and
decrease risk for developing chronic illnesses:
- Eat fresh fruits and veggies:
Fruits and vegetables have a slew of vitamins
and nutrients that will boost your body’s immune system’s defenses against any
type of antigen.
- Stay away from refined carbs and sugars:
Refined carbs and sugars can cause spikes
in blood sugar, leading to exacerbated diabetes or increased risk for
developing the chronic illness.
- Decrease salt intake:
Salty foods can cause your blood pressure to increase,
leading to unmanaged and at-risk hypertension. Unmanaged hypertension is one of
the main chronic illnesses that has been seen to play a major role in
decreasing a patient’s likelihood of dying from COVID-19.
Other ways to decrease risk factors and boost your body’s immune system:
- No smoking!
- Exercise, keep your body active and moving
- Manage your stress
- Curb alcohol consumption
- Spend time outside, but away from others
In conclusion, there’s no doubt that COVID-19 has impacted our lives immensely,
but we don’t have to let it take us down!
It’s been seen that COVID-19 has
changed our diets (positively and negatively) – how we eat, what we eat, when
we eat, how much we eat…
We have also seen that our diets could heavily impact how our bodies respond to
COVID-19 symptoms, and THERE’S HOPE.
By boosting our immune systems with
nutrients and managing/decreasing our risk of developing chronic illnesses like
Type 2 Diabetes, Hypertension, Obesity, etc., we can ultimately decrease our
likelihood of reacting poorly to COVID-19 symptoms.
