Mission readiness demands a properly fueled body - this could mean the difference between top performance and mission failure. View your mind and body as a high-performance athlete. Like professional athletes, to be the best at performing, they need to be nutritionally fit. Eating nutritional foods provide top cognitive and physical performance and improves your long-term health. Eating non-nutritional foods, especially in extreme conditions (heat, cold, humid, and high altitude) can lead to fatigue, rapid weight loss, injury, illness, and dehydration.
Nutritional food examples and why
· Salty foods:
Olives and pickles are a good way to obtain energy for those who are active during the warmer months. Athletes use salty foods for energy, so they are a proven way to beat the heat. Salt is made of sodium, which we lose while sweating in hot conditions. Eating salty foods helps us to replenish the sodium lost through sweat. Too much salty food can make you feel bloated, so eat these items in moderation.
· Fruits and vegetables:
Fruits and vegetables that have a high-water content. This will help you stay hydrated during the hotter days while you are working outside and sweating. Many fruits and vegetables such as watermelon and cucumbers have a high-water content and will assist in keeping you hydrated and not feeling run down from eating heavy foods.
· Soups:
Summer soups differ from other soups, as they tend to be cool and assist in cooling down your body's temperature. Many people may not think of eating soup when it is 100 degrees or more outside, but it is actually a pretty good idea. Soups made from ingredients like celery or avocados do a great job at accomplishing this. Along with helping you cool down, vegetables used in these soups usually have high levels of vitamins to give you more energy in your workday.
· Soups, stews, and porridge can help with hydration levels.
· Also, if you are a fan of spicy chili, it will help you cool off.
· When you eat hot or spicy foods, your nervous system senses rising temperature and it triggers a type of sweat gland called eccrine glands to release the salty stuff.
· Since there are two to four million sweat glands in the human body. Sweating actually cools you off more efficiently than a cone of ice cream or cold drink.
Non-nutritional food examples and why
· Meat:
You may also want to avoid a lot of meat or high-protein foods during a heatwave. It takes more digestive power to digest protein, which creates heat in a process known as thermogenesis.
· Diuretic Foods:
Foods like mangoes, fennel, artichokes, and asparagus are diuretic, meaning they will flush water out of the body. It is essential that you remain properly hydrated during a heatwave.
· Highly Processed Foods:
You should also avoid foods that are highly processed and high in sugar, including candy bars, doughnuts, muffins, breads, pasta, and grains. A lot of water is needed by the body to metabolize these foods.
Negative effects from non-nutritional meals
· Skipping a meal or going too long without eating in general:
Blood sugar takes a dip, signaling your body to start producing cortisol. Cortisol, commonly referred to as the "stress hormone," is released to try to help regulate that dip in blood sugar, but it's also creating a stress response in the body. This can not only leave you feeling anxious or depressed, but also moody, irritable, and confused.
· Lack of vitamin D:
Low amounts of vitamin D in your system causes tired all the time, joint pain, and decreases the productivity of our natural immune system against a lot of our new friends, i.e., COVID, colds, influenza, etc.
· Poor nutrition habits:
Can be a behavioral health issue, because nutrition and diet affect how you feel, look, think, and act. A bad diet results in lower core strength, slower problem-solving ability and muscle response time, and less alertness. Poor nutrition creates many other negative health effects as well such as high cholesterol, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension just to mention a few examples.
Positive Effects from Eating Nutritional Meals
It is a proven fact that eating good nutritional meals is linked to the wellbeing of workers. Some examples include healthier hearts, better sleep, increased energy, mental health benefits, stronger immune systems and better function as the key health benefits of having good nutrition in general. Specific to the workplace, healthy eating increases productivity, decreases the number of sick days, increases happiness, and improves employees’ overall performance.
“Eating high performance/nutritional meals have a direct correlation to the reduction in workplace accidents and injuries. It is not only my goal and all of the Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) senior leaders to reduce the potential for work related accidents and injuries during your tenure at YPG supporting the mission, but also we want you to be a healthy as possible when it comes time to retire and you can take full advantage your family and friends and enjoy all that you have all worked so very hard for”, states YPG Commander Col. Patrick McFall.
We would like to close with the following takeaway: “Everyone should be making their best effort to become a success in his/her job and life. If someone cares for his/her family, friends, and team, then he/she needs to practice safety in all he/she does, including away from work. That’s because ethical values are at the heart of good safety performance!”
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