Question: Do women and men have to have different diets? Also since I am a girl what foods should I incorporate into my diet for long term health?
Comments
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Thankyou Nathan and I will make sure I consume more dairy in my daily diet! 🙂
science2011321
yes – men and women require slightly different diets. usually men are bigger so require more food/energy to keep their body working at its best. the other differences are really to do with minerals; men require more zinc, women more iron. The biggest difference in diets between men and women comes during pregnancy……this of course only happens in females. pregnancy puts a new requirement on the body for the types and amounts of food required.
One of the most important foods that is lacking in people your age is dairy – more so girls. it is an important source of calcium, protein and some good fats.
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Hi science20111321 and frogyy,
In general if both men and women eat a balanced diet then they don’t need to differ too much. This is because foods contain a mixture of different nutrients. But nathan is right – women in particular need additional nutrition when pregnant… one of which is folate – essential to ensure the baby’s epigenetics can form correctly!
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Hi science2011321,
The nutrition that people require will depend not only on your gender, as Nathan and Kate have said, but also on your age, your race (for example, Chinese people tend to absorb calcium better than Europeans, and so can make do with eating less dairy), your individual genetic (and epigenetic) makeup, and of course on what sort of things you do. It probably also depends on a dozen other things I haven’t mentioned.
Don’t go looking for silver bullets: don’t believe it if anybody says, ‘eating X and Y’ “is enough to make you healthy”!
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Nathan, why do men need more zinc than women?
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