While wandering the aisles of the grocery store, have you ever wondered what the words “enriched” and “fortified” mean? These two words are found on the packages of many items that are right there on the shelf, ready to be taken home and eaten. But what do those two terms mean? Obviously someone thinks that it’s important to eat enriched and fortified foods, but why?

As you think about your diet and your body’s need for certain vitamins and minerals, one of the most important things to remember is that the best way to meet those needs is through eating a healthy and balanced diet. With that said, it is also important to note that here are many people who cannot meet all of those needs through diet alone. People who do not eat dairy are a good example of this. Because they do not eat milk products, these people must find other ways to provide their bodies with the requisite amounts of calcium. They are often able to do this through taking nutritional supplements and/or by eating non-dairy foods that have been fortified with calcium.

So, as you may have gathered by now, when a food is labeled as fortified or enriched, that means that additional nutrients have been added to the food before it is presented to the consumer. And while the two terms are similar in meaning, they do have slightly different definitions. When a company “enriches” a food, they have simply replaced nutrients that were lost while the food underwent processing. On the other hand, if a food is identified as a “fortified” product, the producer has added in additional nutrients that would not be found in the food otherwise. One commonly fortified product that most Americans would be familiar with is the milk found in your grocer’s dairy section. Oftentimes, producers of this milk will add vitamin D to their product, which will enhance the drinker’s ability to absorb the calcium that is also found in the milk. Another familiar example is found in the baking section of your local grocery store. If you read the labels of many white flour bags, you will learn that it is often enriched with the B vitamins that are lost during the processing phase of production.

The advent of nutritionally-enhanced products has revolutionized the way that Americans think about nutrition. There are many instances where the addition of these vital vitamins and minerals to an otherwise healthy diet has prevented a whole host of medical problems and offered enhanced protection to the consumer. However, when you are choosing a food product, it is important to remember that no amount of added calcium or B vitamins will change the overall healthiness of the food. Make healthy food choices an overall part of your life by choosing snacks from YoNaturals vending machines. It’s for your health.

Author: Laura Rayburn

If you’ve already taken steps to improve your diet but are trying to figure out how to improve it further, then you should consider increasing your daily intake of dietary fiber. The results of studies have consistently come down in favor of fiber. Dietary fiber offers many health benefits to the people who consume it on a regular basis. Even though it most often touted for its ability to ease problems with constipation, it has also been shown to lower a person’s risk of diabetes and heart disease, among other things.

Furthermore, eating your recommended daily amount of fiber is easy once you know what fiber is and which foods contain it.
Dietary fiber is often called “bulk” or “roughage”, and it is simply the plant material that you eat and that your digestive system cannot break down. Unlike fats or carbohydrates, fiber passes through your body, beginning to ending, essentially unchanged by the digestive mechanisms and reactions that your body normally uses when it is breaking down food into its component parts.

There are two main categories of dietary fiber to consider when you are thinking about improving your eating habits: soluble and insoluble. As the name suggests, the difference in the two is that the former is dissolves in water and the latter does not. Furthermore, the difference in solubility affects the way that the dietary fiber interacts with your body. Once inside your body, soluble fiber dissolves to form a gel-like material that can aid in lowering blood cholesterol and blood sugar levels, whereas insoluble fiber works mainly to increase stool bulk and thus alleviating constipation.

Many people are able to get their daily dose of fiber from eating a diet that is chock full of foods that are high in fiber content. These include such staples as oats, legumes, apples, whole-wheat flour, nuts, and many vegetables. If you believe that your diet is low in fiber and are unsure about how to increase your fiber intake, make sure that you speak to your health care provider about this at your next appointment. There are many benefits to eating a high-fiber diet, and you do not want to miss out on them simply because you do not know what kinds of foods are high in fiber.

If you’re already well-versed in the benefits of a high-fiber diet, then you should already know that many health foods are considered high-fiber foods. In fact, you should know that if you choose your snack foods from YoNaturals heath food vending machines, then you will have many high-fiber options to choose from. Choose it for your health.