Nutrition & Exercise Column
To suggest a topic send us an email
Selecting healthy foods made easier with the ONQI
Beginning in the summer of 2008 foods will contain a rating of their overall nutritional quality using a ranking score of their "Overall Nutritional Quality Index, or ONQI." The rankingwas developed by a team of leading North American research scientists through the Yale University - Griffen Hospital Prevention Research Center, and a nationally recognized authority in nutrition and chronic disease prevention. The project was fully supported independent of all commercial interests by the Center for Disease Control.According to the ONQI website, the index is an algorithm designed to generate a single, summative score for the “overall nutritional quality” of a food based on its micronutrient and macronutrient composition and several other of its nutritional properties such a fiber and caloric... (more)
An important point to remember when you are training is that you do not gain fitness - strength, power, speed, size ... endurance - while you are training. Fitness and adaptations come during your recovery period between workouts provided optimal rest and nutrition are provided. Many athletes mistakenly believe they are gaining strength while lifting or endurance while running. Exercise is an important, even critical, aspect of conditioning. However, exercise provides the stimulus for change, not the change itself.Exercise is a stress, and as such creates an incentive for transformation. During exercise fuel stores are utilized and micro-damage is imposed. In some sense muscle is broken down during exercise and repaired during recovery. Provided the appropriate training stimulus is applied... (more)
