Digestive regulators >>>> Ballast substances in nutrition - what is it?

Ballast substances in nutrition - what is it?

It would be nice if the human body could process absolutely all the components of food and assimilate them, then you would have to buy food in smaller quantities for food. But, unfortunately, the human body is extremely picky, and prefers to absorb only the most necessary and most useful of what it is offered to eat.

Some of the components in plant and animal products are not components of the main and auxiliary structural elements in the biochemical sense, are not split and are removed from the body in a conditionally processed form. These substances, as a rule, are plant and animal connective tissue of various types and have no nutritional energy value, but they have quite specific tasks in the functioning of any living organism - they play the role of a stimulator of the motor functions of the digestive tract. Such substances are called ballast substances, and they, despite their name, are of great importance for the digestion process.

Whatever a person eats, he needs ballast substances that will promote food components along the entire path of the gastrointestinal tract, where the processes of utilization of useful substances take place. If you manage nutrition without ballast substances, as happens when it is necessary to maintain vital functions with the help of physiological solutions, then intestinal motility processes are disturbed, and it acquires some laziness - it ceases to “please” with regular bowel movements and causes many functional disorders that can develop into serious ones. painful problems up to the development of deadly diseases.

Therefore, when people talk about a balanced diet, they mean foods with a high content of dietary fiber, and not just foods with a high nutritional value. Calories, which adherents of various diets love to count so much, speak of the nutritional value of the product for the body, that is, the energy value. But, as a rule, ballast substances, which are equally important for nutrition, are not counted.

In order for the intestines to work regularly, thereby ensuring their health (and hence the general health of a person), absolutely all meals (morning, afternoon, evening and night) must be combined with the intake of those foods that contain a sufficient amount of ballast substances.

What food products contain ballast substances, so necessary for a person for health? These are products of plant origin, in which there is much more connective tissue useful for the human body than in products of animal origin. It is for this reason that all meals are recommended to be combined with the use of vegetables, fruits or berries, where the ballast substances are represented by the skin, small grains (seeds), stroma (contained in the pulp of plants). Whole grain cereals with coarse grain processing, coarsely fibrous stems and leaves of food plants, wholemeal flour products, plant sprouts, bran, edible buds and flowers, plant tubers, root vegetables, mushrooms, algae, legume grains - all this is a source of useful ballast substances.

The amount of dietary fiber in livestock products, fowl, fish and seafood is much less, but animal foods can also enrich the diet with dietary fiber if there is no desire to eat plant foods. In healthy digestion, ballast substances of animal origin can be represented by the liver, heart and kidneys (poultry, cattle, rabbit and other animal species acceptable for food), fish roe (shell of eggs), fish milt, fish fillet without technological processing, squid fillet, shellfish, crustaceans.

Water in its physiological significance for the functioning of the body also plays the role of a ballast substance, which, in excess, is excreted from the body, taking with it all the harmful components isolated from food or air, or from the waste products of harmful microbes that accidentally enter the body. Water helps the connective tissue to swell, which stimulates intestinal peristalsis and allows for painless evacuation of digestive waste. This fact is the reason for the recommendation to drink water regularly throughout the day.

It must be remembered that ballast substances in the diet accelerate metabolic processes, and consumed in large quantities, can cause a quickly coming feeling of hunger, as the body quickly removes food residues and requires new food intake. It is this property of ballast substances of plant origin that is used in diets to cleanse the body of toxins, or in weight loss diets that require rapid evacuation of food from the gastrointestinal tract.

Ballast substances in nutrition are an aid to the body in the matter of metabolism and in maintaining the norm of body weight, which directly depends on the time the food is in the gastrointestinal tract. Those people who like to eat a lot, but are interested in losing weight or maintaining a normal body weight, have every chance to solve their problems painlessly, just by introducing the right amount of ballast substances into the nutrition ration.

Many diseases smolder in the body due to insufficiently rapid evacuation of food residues: intestinal disorders, intoxication, skin diseases, diseases associated with metabolic disorders. This must be taken into account when forming your diet, and the products should be combined not only taking into account their calorie content, but also taking into account the amount of ballast substances in these products.