Editor’s Note: Injury prevention and wellness handouts are an effective (and inexpensive) way to educate and motivate employees to use good work practices and take care of their bodies.

Scroll to the bottom of this post for the free Wellness Handout PDF file.

Making Healthy Food Choices

Good nutrition is the best way to maintain a healthy weight and keep your body and mind well. Making healthy food choices daily is a difficult, but necessary task if you are to stay well.

At Ergonomics Plus, we teach that prevention is better than treatment. This is a key employee training objective! Making healthy food choices and choosing to live a healthier lifestyle is key to preventing the onset of costly chronic diseases.

Basic Nutrition: How Calories Work

Calories are a unit of energy. Our body needs fuel for energy, so we eat food which contains calories. The basic requirements of our body are water, carbohydrates, protein, and fat. These nutrients provide energy in the form of calories.

Our bodies are constantly burning calories as we go about our day in order to function. You can manage your weight by balancing the energy you take in from consuming food (calories) and the energy your body burns throughout the day (activity).

Basic Nutrition: Living Food vs. Dead Food

While it is important for weight control to maintain energy balance, it’s even more important to understand that not all calories are created equal! For optimal health, we need to eat more “living” foods and stay away from “dead” foods.

Living foods include fruit, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. Living foods are harvested. Dead foods are the opposite. They contain man-made stuff like glucose, fructose, dextrose, preservatives, and additives. Dead foods are not harvested; they’re processed. Remember: less dead foods and more living foods!

Free Handout: Making Healthy Food Choices

Here’s a free handout you can use to make your employees aware of the importance of making healthy food choices. Click the link below to open the PDF file. To download the file to your computer, right click on the link then click “Save Link As” or “Save Target As”.

Making Healthy Food Choices [PDF]