Never before have we been in a situation like we are today and hopefully we never will be in the future. Living through a pandemic is not something I or anyone I know anticipated so we can hardly be blamed for not being prepared. We can however research and reflect upon the situation and start to prepare ourselves for the future which will never be the same as the past.

The UK Government has been planning for us to think about our nutrition and the nutrition of others that we may care for since 2016 in their Eatwell Guide  (pictured above) which, is there for us all to prepare for an plan our nutritional intake better. By improving nutritional intake we can also improve our own health and resilience and for other people that we care for too. The UK Government recommends for the average adult that we should have daily between

Calories –  2500 for men and 2000 for women

Protein –  55 g for men and 45 for women

Fat  – less than 97 g for men and 78g for women

Carbohydrate  – 333g for men and 267g for women

Sugar  – 33g for men and 27g for women

Salt  –  less than 6g daily 

Fibre –  30g a day 

The above “macronutrients” are unfamiliar to many of us except perhaps the calorific daily intake, but we may know little about the others? In addition, there are vitamin and mineral (micronutrients) recommendations too which you can read more on here (Public Health England 2016). Most importantly we need to be asking ourselves how can I improve my nutritional intake if I don’t know what the recommendations are? The first step in improving nutrition is therefore finding our how much people should be consuming then,  find out what you are consuming including micronutrients, to improve your overall health and nutrient intake. Every organ in the body needs the right fuel for it to work properly. We know this for our cars which we often take great care of, so why don’t we do it for ourselves?