What are You Eating at Work?

Did you grow up on your mother’s delicious utan bisaya, vegetable lumpia, fried chicken, and chopsuey? When we have our concerned and loving parents looking over us, we often get to eat enough healthy food at the right time every day. As the environment, peer pressure and circle of people change from formal education to the hurried life of employment, priorities among many of us often rearrange themselves according to laziness, necessity and influence of other people.

As a result, many of us are eating too little or too much such that some of us are alarmingly underweight and the others sadly overweight and obese.

Apart from all these, some of us turn to smoking cigarettes to calm down nerves, contract sexually-transmitted infections from unprotected sex, become chummy with alcohol and drugs to the point of abuse due to social pressure, and turn weak after being too lazy to regularly exercise.

What is also distressing is the attitude of some of us toward nutritious food. One, many workers buy food from stores outside their companies or from peddlers who come and sell directly at their doorsteps. This raises the question on how long you will depend on others for food and, in the process, for your nutrition.

Second, some of us are guilty of buying and eating high-calorie fast food during office breaks because they’re quick to order and very appetizing. This puts on the table another question on how long you will stand up, take control and manage the food you eat.

Putting all these factors together ultimately results into this question: How long can you work?

When you always abuse your body with poor nutrition and lack of exercise, you should not be surprised when you later on become at risk (and high at that) of lifestyle-related diseases, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, and heart disease. Health, after all, is wealth. If you continue to stick to an unhealthy lifestyle from home to work, you will soon run out of energy to continue working and earn money for the present and future.

This is why we advise you to take up the healthy cooking habits of your parents who prepared your nutritious food when you were young. Cooking your own nutritious meals may appear tedious at first but taking responsibility for your nutrition, deciding what to eat and preparing them is worth the trouble for the sake of your body that labors so many hours in a day. Then you will reap the long-term efforts of consistently observing a healthy diet and proper exercise. Nancy Cudis-Ucag

nnc.gov.ph