Carbohydrates are very important to athletes as it provides them with fuel. It is stored as glycogen in the liver and in their muscles and it is released when needed during exercise. The other source of energy is fat but it cannot be converted into energy as quickly. Athletes also need to consume a lot of fluid. Most athletes will drink water which is adequate but for intense activity isotonic and hypotonic drinks are much more useful to speed up the process of transporting water to the bloodstream.
Leisure Pursuits:
The way people spend their leisure can be a massive influence on what they eat as sports people will have a high carbohydrate diet and if you are quite social you will heat out a lot as you’re on the go. Also when you’re on holiday everyone tends to eat differently as they are away. Mainly when people are on holiday they tend to eat unhealthily and they justify it because they are on holiday.
Economic
Influences
Cost Of Food:
Nowadays most things you see is to eat healthy and have a balanced diet but generally trying to eat healthier cost more which for some people just isn’t acceptable as some people do have to live on budgets and can’t always afford the fresh foods. Supermarkets nowadays are criticised for focusing on salty, sugary and high- fat foods when running promotions instead of focusing on the fresh fruit and veg.
On the other hand not all healthy foods are overly expensive so if you advise people to eat healthy you can say that not all healthy foods are expensive, for example chicken and pork tend to be cheaper than beef or lamb an are generally healthier because they are lower in fat.
Large supermarkets now have their own label products which are similar nutritionally to the branded ones.
Food supply
Seasonal Variation:
Once fruit and vegetables were only sold as they came into season but now as we are a global market it means we can now eat most fruits all year round which are usually why some are so expensive. This is a good thing as we can now eat all different foods all year round. The thing is that we expect to be able to buy all types of food all year round which does have a dramatic effect on some of our food supplies such as fish.
Socio-cultural
One of the largest influences of the food we consume is our family. The eating habits we have are first developed from our parents as they give us guidelines on what we should and shouldn't eat.
Depending on the religion you follow, depends on the food you eat such as Muslims aren't allowed to eat pork. As a child you may not be religious so the food you consume will be down to either being taught by your parents.
Some mealtimes are more important in some cultures than in others. In some households mealtime at the table is seen as a social event where the family will get together and discuss how’s there days been.
Education
Influences
Public Health
Every borough council have and environmental health department which have to monitor anyone who is preparing food for public consumption to ensure that the food is fit to eat and prepared hygienically. Any food that is found to be unfit is destroyed, if unsafe food hygiene practice is shown then improvement notices are issued and organisations can be temporarily or permanently closed to ensure that the public’s health is not at risk.
Food Hygiene:
Food hygiene is critical for the provision of food that will benefit health. It really doesn’t matter how high quality or fresh the food is, if good hygiene is not put in place it can make people ill and could even kill them. It is vital that everyone has good food hygiene and it involves frequent hand washing, correct food storage and through cooking.
Roles of Health Professionals
Dieticians:
These people will work with patients that that need special diets, dieticians will try and help and individual to eat the things within their medical condition while trying to maintain a healthy balanced diet.
Doctors:
Some people will go to their general practitioner (GP) to discuss their diet. People may have come to discuss minor dietary things but as they will only see a doctor the GP will take the opportunity to check their weight or blood pressure, order blood test for diabetes or for cholesterol levels. The GP will give advice to them about trying to avoid high-salt foods and if necessary they will be referred to a dietician.
Carers:
Carers need to understand healthy eating and special dietary requirements as they work with service users who depend on them to provide them with nutritionally balanced meals. It is known that people who are in care homes do not have a very good knowledge of nutritional foods which is worrying as the elderly especially rely on the nutrients for everyday life.
Health and Fitness Instructors:
The staffs that work in gyms and leisure centres which include personal trainers who work with people who are trying to improve their fitness level but are not athletes. It is vital that the instructors have a good understanding of diet and healthy eating as they are working with people who would like to maintain their healthy lifestyle.
Social Policy
Legislation, Regulations and Policies
Every child matters was government Green Paper published in 2003 due to the death of Victoria Climbié it is aiming to improve the well-being of every child. One of the main outcomes which were intended was ‘being healthy’ and also the quality of food that children eat. There is a government publication which is Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives it states ‘Our ambition is to be the first major nation to reverse the risen tide of obesity and being overweight. Our initial focus will be on children: by2020, we aim to reduce the proportion of overweight and obese children to 2000 levels’
There is now a Nutritional Standards for school lunches and the main requirements are:
- High-quality meat, poultry or oily fish are regularly available
-
At least two portions of fruit and vegetables with every meal.
The children’s act 2004 realised that poor health is a significant barrier to educational achievement; therefore school meals need to be nutritionally balanced. An ideal lunch would not contain artificially flavoured or coloured food as this has been related to hyper activities amongst children. A good diet insures stable growth and development protecting against infection, insures that a child’s diet starts off well encouraging them to eat healthy as an adult. This ensures that children and young people’s diets will be influenced by what is on offer at school.
M2
A person’s lifestyle will have a huge impact on their diet because different people have different lifestyles. For example you may have a very busy lifestyle as an adult where they will find themselves eating out a lot as they are always on the go or skipping meals as they just may not have enough time for it, this isn’t good for your body as all the body will do if you miss meals will eat away at your body, but also if you are constantly eating out all the time half the things you probably will eat will be much higher in fats, salts and sugars than it would if you had a meal you cooked yourself this may put a lot of strain on your vital organs. This type of diet will also put a lot of strain on your body and in the blood which may block vital arteries, which will make your heart work harder especially if you are gain a lot of weight from what you’re eating. Therefore if you keep having a diet with high fats, salts and sugars this will have an impact as you will not have time to actually sit down and enjoy the food instead your rushing around and have no time to cook fresh meals yourself, also not sitting and eating will feel like in an hour or so like you haven’t eaten as it is just shoved down your throat so quickly and has had to time to digest properly. Also if you do eat out a lot and it isn’t healthy foods this may increase the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke also an increased risk of type two diabetes and you may have a high blood pressure. However not all adults will have a busy lifestyle but instead have maybe a very active lifestyle where it is essential that they have a high carbohydrate diet which will allow them to have more energy to burn off, this will have an impact on their lives as they may not be able to eat out somewhere and always have a high carbohydrate meal m meaning that they tend to make meals before hand and taking them out and about with them, which will suit them better rather than not eating a high carbohydrate meal and not being able to fulfil their active lifestyle. However if you eat too much carbohydrates and don’t work it off in can possibly lead to diabetes and may lead to putting on weight if it is not worked off. Eating large amounts of carbohydrates may cause an over-production of insulin in the bloodstream which could lead to weight gain.
Some working class people may find it difficult to feed their family each week as the cost of food keeps rising. Some people will struggle feeding their family on a budget each week and come the day before shopping the cupboards will be nearly bare, especially those who are single parents. This will affect what an individual eats as they may not be able to have a nutritionally balanced meal everyday or it is easier to have ready meals meaning that children could be having more nutrients than necessary. Nowadays a lot of ready meals tend to have a lot of sugar and are usually high in fat which isn’t good for the adolescence or through adulthood. If a parent is struggling to feed their families each week it could mean that more expensive foods such as fresh fruit and vegetables will not always be on the weekly shop meaning that the family may miss out on vital vitamins and minerals. This could lead to for example scurvy if you don’t eat enough vitamin C, vitamins and minerals also help keeping cells and organs working well. So if you don’t consume enough vitamins or minerals this could affect your health as you may have tiredness, weakness, sore muscle or deformed bones. The mother will usually do the cooking and food shopping there for trying to keep to a budget but also give their children a meal each day but they may find it difficult to provide their children with nutritionally balanced meal each day this is because they may not actually have the right information about what different foods have in them so they may not have the right knowledge of what actually is a healthy nutritional balanced meal. This will affect an individual’s health as when they start to cook meals and live on their own they may not realise that in some ways in which you cook foods vital vitamins and nutrients can be lost, so they may think over cooking cauliflower is still good for them as it is a vegetable but when you cook it in water the water will contain more nutrients than the actual food. This also could result in vital nutrients being missed out in their diet which could affect the body’s organs and cells. However most of the meals that the mother provide will usually be meat and two vegetables if it is affordable, but some of the meals may not be nutritionally balanced which could affect the child’s health later on as some children live with their mum for a long time till in their twenties and some mum’s will cook and meal for them everyday therefore if the meals don’t have the acquired nutrients they child may have problems with their health such as being anaemic if they don’t get enough iron, they may also if you do not get enough protein for a long time you may see poor growth, abnormal hair growth and muscle wasting. They may also consume meals which have a higher fat and salt quantity than they are meant to, therefore later on they may tend to eat fatty and salty foods more often as that is all they know. This will affect their health as they may result in high cholesterol which can lead to having severely blocked arteries which will put a lot of strain on your heart as it will have to work harder, this also could lead to heart attacks and strokes, and also they may have blood clots which also lead to heart attacks.
Children will be at school for most of their childhood meaning that they rely on the schools to provide them with nutritionally balanced meals each lunch time or their parents if they provide a packed lunch. If the school doesn’t provide them with balanced healthy meals then this will be doing nothing good for the children involved that are eating it as they will not be getting the vital nutrients that they need especially as they are still growing rapidly. Also the children who are having packed lunches will be relying on their parents to give them what they would like rather than what is good for them, nowadays in some schools they ban children from bringing in crisps and chocolates so that every child will have not have a nutritionally balanced lunch, this is a good idea as some children’s lunches will be full of really unhealthy foods like chocolate and crisps. They ban things like crisps as having one packet of crisps a day this is equivalent to a litre of oil a year which isn’t at all good, also it then stops they children from getting into bad habits as people that are now 15 or 16 and had a packet of crisps in their lunch will now more or less have at least one packet a day. Also its a good idea to take chocolate out as some children may consume a lot of chocolate and if they have a lot of this everyday they will be eating a lot of sugar and fat which later on could cause damage to their health, for example if the fats and sugars aren’t used they could start to block arteries and they will also be stored as fast which could be all around vital organs which means that additional strain will be put on them to keep the body working properly.
Another influence on an individual’s nutritional health is the price of food. For instance it is nowadays a lot cheaper and easier for a teenager to go to McDonalds and have a meal than trying to cook one by them or to go to a restaurant as they can be very expensive especially as students will not always have a lot of money. In some colleges and schools the food they serve can be really over priced, for example at one school a Panini is £1.30 but at another college it is nearly double that £2.40 which for teenage boys especially will no where near fill them up, so therefore as McDonalds and Burger King are only a 5-10 minute walk and a lot cheaper for a whole meal they will more than likely go to a fast food restaurant as they now do cheaper meals for students. There lifestyle does impact their nutritional health as going for a 5-10 minute walk and getting a whole meal which is filling fast and cheap is what fits in with a student’s lifestyle, however this is not at all what they should be doing each lunch-time. Most foods you get from a fast food place are normally quite high it fats and salts and sugars meaning that having a meal each lunch will make them put on weight and may also put strain on their heart and lungs fat tends to build around them but is unnoticeable to the human eye, this could lead to heart disease and strokes.
D1
As some of the service users go out to day care centres this means that they have to go with a packed lunch meaning that they may not get the nutrients they would have if they didn’t go out. This is because in the care home will normally provide a nutritionally balanced meal for lunch for all the rest of the residents. They do this because elderly people still need to have nutrients like everyone else but also elderly tend to not always cook for themselves if their on their own, so it’s essential that a nutritional balanced meal is given so that they don’t become weaker or malnourished. However most day centres will usually provide lunch which can be a nutritionally balanced meal. But if the service users do need to take a lunch with them their care home may try and get them to have lunch early if it is possible so that the service users aren’t missing out on any nutrients. However this may not always be possible so the care home could ask the day centre to provide the service users with lunch so that there is more of a chance that the service user will have a nutritionally healthy lunch.
As all of the service users will have different personal taste to each other this means that the meals that are prepared may not be to all of their service users liking. To overcome this, once a week the service users will have a meeting with a service provider to discuss their likes and dislikes. Once they have had a meeting to discuss their likes and dislikes with every service user the staff will put together a menu for the week and then all the service users will look at the menu and decide whether they all agree on it or not, this allows them to have their independence on what they eat. If they all agree then that’s the menu for the week however if they do not agree they will have to change the meals they don’t want or they will just a separate meal from the others.
As well as personal taste a lot of the elderly resident will have underlying health conditions which will affect their nutritional health as they will have to eat certain foods or are not allowed to eat certain foods or even some may have to be fed as they for a certain reason are unable to do it for themselves. If they have to be fed this could be a massive impact as they may not even know what they are being fed which means they could be missing out on vital nutrients which they may have to have. To overcome this, the carer should inform the service user of what they are eating and if they don’t want to eat the food then at least they can say before it is put into their mouths. Also if the elderly are vegetarians or are very religious all the meals will have to fit in with them as it is crucial for the individuals that they do not eat the food that they either think is morally wrong to eat or if the animal is sacred, the staff need to respect that and not try and make them eat foods they don’t want to eat.
Every service you in the home care home should have a care plan which is an agreement between the care home and the service user to help the individual manage their health. This will properly be written as a document or on the resident notes etc. Each person who has a care plan will normally have a long-term condition, for instance a service user that has type 1 diabetes will have a care plan saying what the person should do eat day and saying things they should and shouldn’t be doing during the day in regards with their illness, like eating to much sugar in the meals and in tea and coffee. At my work placement each resident has a care plan so that new members of staff or new employers or agencies staff can read through them and know important information about each service user. The care plan is also used to try and help service users to do certain things for example if a service user is overweight according to their BMI and they suffer from being over weight such as not being able to walk or walk for a long amount of time, the care plan will have information on how to reduce her weight such as eating healthy and less food, the care plan is reviewed every three months to see if it is working in favour of the service user.
The staff in the residential home should know each of the service users so that they will know about each of the service users own needs, for example some residents may not be able to join in on exercises as they may not be able to stand on their own without any support of a table or Zimmer frame ect. The only exercise thy may be able to do is to throw and catch a soft ball which will help their fine motor skills as well as their arm and shoulder muscles. Some elderly homes will take residents out for meals if they have a birthday or for special occasions, however staff shouldn’t take them out on a regular basis as this may not allow them to have a nutritionally balanced meal.
At my work placement each day the service users are given a menu for the following day so that they can decide what they would like to have for dinner as some care homes will just cook one meal and the service users will have to eat that, at least if they have choice they can decide which they prefer and that there choosing which is a human right, a right to freedom of speech. The menu for each person will be different as some have trouble seeing so the font will be larger and for the blind the menu is put into Braille so they are able to read it and also if a service user prefers some one to read the menu to them a member of staff will read it aloud for them, this is important as it is regarding their quality of life as even though they are old they should still be able to do what they like as they have right to choose what they want.
