Most pf the people, especially the business owners believe that healthy snacks can increase productivity among the employees by a significant margin. It is for this reason they invest a fair bit of money on providing healthy snacks to their workers for free.
People often fail to realize that what they eat during the day often plays a significant role in determining their ability to focus on their specific job in hand and achieve their goals. However, this is true and proven though different studies and researches.
Mots of these studies suggest that healthy snacking habits is the key to create a conducive and more productive working environment. However, and unfortunately, for most of the people, especially the workers, this is not the first port of call which ideally should be.
Business owners realize this and therefore make all their efforts to ensure that their workers eat healthy, at least in their workplace. It is for this reason they always have their break rooms and kitchen stuffed with healthy food options either by hiring a classic snacks delivery service or have it done by their own in-house team.
Affects your brain
According to biology, your brain commands about 20% of the resting metabolic rate of your body. This is because:
- Human brain is rich in nerve cellsor neurons
- It laps up glucose absolutely and
- It requires an almost endless supply of it because it does not have any mechanism of its own to store energy itself.
Studies say that glucose is an essential element that helps in facilitating the constant sending of signals that goes into your brains every day. That means your brain will consume a lot of glucose especially when it has to deal with jobs that are mentally challenging. Low glucose levels in your brain will quickly result in cognitive impairment and result in low productivity.
Therefore, it really does not matter how ergonomic and distraction-free your working space is, you will not be able to be as productive as you are and should be if you do not provide your brain with the required and continuous supply of glucose which provide it with the energy it requires to work properly.
What and when you eat
Healthy snacking is not just what you eat but also when you eat. Both these are equally important for you to ensure if you really want to provide the right food to your brain to power it up.
You can provide this fuel only when you eat the right food as food is certainly the energy source. However, when you think your food as the fuel, it is also necessary to know that all food will not provide the right energy that you need because all energy sources are not created equal.
For example, a candy bar is a source of enough glucose just as a piece of fruit but the piece of fruit has some other benefits if consumed. It will provide you with other nutrients such as:
- Vitamins
- Blood glucose-stabilizing fiber and others.
Most important, it does not need any special mention that a piece of fruit is much, much better a food as compared to a piece of any type of sweet.
Get serious with your food
With all this knowledge, if you are serious about your work and productivity, you will also need to be serious about the types of food you eatduring the day. This is because unhealthy foods will certainly have a deleterious effect on your capability to concentrate and therefore will affect your productivity.
It is also equally important that you ensure that you do not allow you to get too hungry. This is because it will plummet your brain into a deep ‘brain fog’ and draw out your energy.
The only useful and effective solution to all these thereforeis to eat healthy snacks so that it keeps you going.
Make a better plan
You will need to make a better plan to move forward, which ideally, is easier said than done.
- You will have a lot of temptations on your way with friends offering a candy whom you do not want to disappoint
- Invitations to the birthdays of your colleagues to have bite of the cake
- Innumerable parties and eating outs and
- The constant desire to have a bar of chocolate every time you pass by the vending machine in your workplace.
Apart from avoiding all these tempting offers most wisely and politely you will also have to know when to stop and eat while you are on a roll.
No matter how difficult it is, the bestworkaround is to create a strategic plan so that you can avoid the temptation of eating junk. You will be better off if you have healthy foods within your reach always at arm’s length. Slowly but surely, this way the sugar rush temptation will melt away.
Food to store
There are a few specific healthy snacks that you should store in your drawer. Make sure first that you get only non-perishable healthy snacks. These are:
- Apples and clementine oranges
- Bananas (but make sure that you eat it before fruit-ripening ethylene gas is emitted)
- Dried fruits as these are mess free items to store but make sure that these are free from added sugar
- Nuts are good option but avoid those nuts that are candied or heavily salted
- Pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds are also a great option for a nutritional punch
- A jar of peanut butter or any other nut butter is good to store for spreading it on whole wheat crackers and apple slices
- You can also store tuna cans or packets if you are a fan of it as this will provide you with healthy oils and proteins
- Finally, you can store some antioxidant-rich foods such as dark chocolate bars in your drawer.
You may even keep pre-made trail mix and granola but whatever you store makes sure that none contains added sugar to prevent the high and then a significant slump to affect your concentration.
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