Nutrition

V. Key Issues: Population Health >> E. Health Promotion >> Nutrition

Topic Outline

1 Key Questions (by Chinwe Atkinson)

Key Questions (by Chinwe Atkinson)

What is Nutrition and What Role Does it Play in One’s Daily Life?

Nutrition is defined as the act or process of nourishing. The primary source of nutrition is food. The relationship that one has with food whether in relation to quantity, quality or other factors affects greatly one’s nutrition and health status. Many states have implemented healthier nutrition programs to address growing incidence of obesity and have spearheaded programs in fresh food delivery in supermarkets and grocery stores. Indeed financial and physical access to nutritious foods, in addition to education and guidance on good nutrition and lifestyle choices are core components of increasing the health impact of such food and health programs (Creating Healthy States). Various dietary guidelines have been created to assist in the process of establishing healthy nutritional practices: Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005 as well as practical means of implementing healthy diet practices on a daily basis: How to Read a Nutrition Label, Nutrition and the Health of Young People, The Community Nutrition Mapping Project. This web page seeks to provide you with a wide array of information necessary to sustain good health through good nutrition.

How Does Good Nutrition Impact Health Status?

Good nutrition is essential to ensuring optimum health status. One of the keys to establishing good nutrition is to balance one’s diet. Harvard School of Public Health Department of Nutrition offers answers to many questions regarding the affects of individual foods in improving health status such as one of their latest reports: Benefits of Eating Fish Greatly Outweigh the Risks. In addition there are organizations such as American Society for Nutrition, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), and American College of Nutrition – ACN as well as many others that provide expert reports on the latest findings in human nutrition.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, and Nutrition.Gov as well as other governmental and private organizations have gone through great lengths to increase the awareness of and provide information on healthy eating practices and the positive affects of such and the possible adverse affects of not sustaining good nutrition. Resources such as Fit Foods: Eating Well for Life, and USDA Nutrient Database, USDA – CNPP – SuperTracker and The Nutrition Guide from Answers.com as well as a many other informational tools provide means of restructuring your personal life habits around sustaining good nutrition.

In the Age of Growing Rates of Childhood Obesity, What Key Recommendations Are There About Establishing Healthy Nutrition At an Early Age and in Public Schools?

Many governmental and private agencies are taking great interest in the nutrition of children. In an age when fast foods play a large role in the makeup of the American food industry and growing number of children are overweight and developing advanced forms of diabetes there is reason to be concerned. Programs such as the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion’s Healthy Youth and their report Making It Happen,which provides tools for healthier school nutrition and has highlighted various successful school nutrition programs in several US states, as well as the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine 2006 School Lunch Report Card are available to assist in providing time-sensitive material on child nutrition and wellbeing.

What Should Humans Eat to be Maximally Healthy?

Michael Pollan: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy.” This approach is confirmed by David Katz, MD, MPH, Director of Yale University Prevention Research Center.
Aaron Carroll summarizes the literature on water consumption concluding there is no science behind the myth that people should drink 8 glasses of water daily.

Background

Healthy Eating Index
Food Guide Pyramid
2000 Dietary Guidelines for Americans
Stanford Scientists Cast Doubt on Advantages of Organic Meat and Produce (New York Times, 9.4.12). A Stanford meta-analysis of hundreds of different studies concluded that fruits and vegetables labeled organic were, on average, no more nutritious than their conventional counterparts, which tend to be far less expensive. Nor were they any less likely to be contaminated by dangerous bacteria like E. coli.