Maintaining or improving your health means eating right, exercising regularly, caring for your body, avoiding harmful habits and substance abuse and other preventive strategies. You'll also find tips on safety within and outside your home; dealing with the challenges of our environment; and guarding your health when traveling outside the United States. The next few articles with help provided information on getting and staying fit.
Nutrition and Health
What Is a Healthful Diet?
Not many subjects are if consuming interest to virtually all of us - but food is certainly one of them. It is a principal pleasure of life and also a life-giving essential. Without the continual replacement of nutrients in our bodies, we would die. Food is so important that from time immemorial it has formed the basis of rituals in every society. One measure of the success of a society is the abundance and quality (or lack there of) of its food.
As recently as 60 years ago, the focus of nutrition research was to fight malnutrition and diseases caused by lack of basic nutrients. Today, the pendulum has swung, and over consumption has replaces deficiency as America's leading nutrition problem. Dr. C. Everett Koop, Surgeon under President Ronald Reagan, in a report on the nation's health places nutrition high on the nation's health agenda, along with reducing the spread of AIDS and eliminating smoking.
Recommendations on how Americans should eat have been made by several government ad private agencies and are reviewed in this article. Remember that these recommendations are for the general public. You are an individual and depending upon your family background and your own health findings, you may require more stringent dietary restrictions or possibly your physician or dietitian may reassure you that a relaxed approach to these recommendations may be appropriate for you. It is reasonable to anticipate that as scientific knowledge advances, changes will be made in these recommendations from time to time.
These recommendations are covered in this article, along with basic information on how your body uses food. The pages that follow also discuss weight control and how to eat well when faced with disease. If you need specific advice about a nutrition question beyond what is offered in these pages, talk to a registered dietician. The letters R. D. (for Registered Dietician) after a person's name show that he or she is registered with the American Dietetic Association. To obtain this credential, a person must earn an undergraduate degree in a 4-year program in food science and nutrition at an accredited college or university, complete 6 to 12 months of accredited or approved training in practical aspects of dietetics, and pass a national examination. In addition, Registered Dietitians must complete 75 hours of professional education every 5 years.
Some states have licenses procedures, and a dietitian may also be a Licensed Dietitian (L. D.) under the regulations of the state health department. Your local health department or physician can refer you to a competent dietitian. Other people may also be helpful in examining or improving your nutritional status. Some physicians have a particular interest in nutrition. . Home economists are often a good source of information on meal planning, food preservation, and food preparation, but they are less qualified than an R. D. in advising about the nutritional needs of a specific person. The term nutritionist is not specifically defined and, unfortunately, it is sometimes used by people who have no credible nutritional training and who seek to sell dietary supplements or weight-loss schemes. Some may even display a diploma or a certificate that may mean very little.
You can verify whether a school listed on a diploma is a bona fide educational institution by asking your local librarian to check whether the school is accredited by an agency recognized by the U. S. Department of Education or the Council on Post-secondary Accreditation. The nutrition staff at your local hospital may also be a help for evaluating qualification.
Is There an Ideal Diet?
In this day of intense interest in diet and health, many people yearn and often search for the perfect diet - one that will produce super health, above-normal vigor, strength, and resistance to disease, one that will delay aging, and one that will keep them slim. So pervasive is this interest that thousands of people spent vast qualities of time and money searching for the perfect answer. Does or can such a diet exist? In all likelihood, the answer is no. Out nutritional needs differ at each stage of our lives from infancy through childhood, maturity, pregnancy, old age and in states of disease. We also vary in our genetic tendencies toward diseases, including hypertension, some cancers, and heart and vascular diseases, so food components such as salts or fats pose different risks to different people.
