It is wise to make the best use of existing resources, for providing a healthy, diversified, and balanced diet, in one’s current settings. So, let’s gradually modify your existing diets by including or excluding one or more item(s) or starting a new diet recommended as per your needs (1,2,3).
What do you think? Take a few minutes.
I want to discuss the issue in detail in the following sections.
A. Modifying diets by including or excluding item(s):
Advantages:
- There are plenty of scopes to include one or more items gradually (4,5): Demand-based instead of forced feeding.
- There are also scopes to exclude one or more items gradually based on a person’s needs: Less disturbance in culture, eating habits, cooking practices, tastes, etc. As a result, less adjustment is needed in person, family, or community settings.
- (continue..)
Limitations:
- The ability and accessibility of experts such as dieticians, nutritionists, etc. are needed to modify their diet based on their nutritional assessment report or Nutritional status,
- It may be costly sometimes.
- (continue..)
B. Recommending new diets:
Advantages:
- May directly affect morbidity and mortality rates in the short, mid, and long term as needed by individuals or groups of people based on different factors such as age, sex, physiological conditions, diseases, etc. (6).
- Help to recommend a diet based on gaps in existing knowledge, attitude, and practices in diet.
- (continue..)
Limitations:
- Sometimes less effective due to the low rate of acceptability, practices, and sustainability(7,8).
- May impose burden for making or carrying recommended foods with costly, less or unavailable food items.
- (continue..)
It is not as simple as thought to design personal food intake patterns, with or without the help of experts such as dietitians, and nutritionists, using existing knowledge available. Sometimes, an individual may be misguided.
To make it simple, for the mass people, information needs to be updated, available, accessible easily, and regularly at low or no cost. At the same time, the availability and accessibility of experts such as nutritionists, dietitians, and trained personnel should need to be increased in different government and non-government sectors. In addition, false or misleading information must be restricted, deleted, or removed by authorized organizations for the greater welfare of human beings.
Let’s bargain for modifying or replacing your existing diet for the betterment of your health and nutritional status(9,10). So, transit your learning of the basics of nutrition from authentic sources into practices with or without the health of nutrition and food science personnel as needed or available (11).
(Continued…)
*Featured image credit goes to https://www.pexels.com
References:
- Changing Your Habits for Better Health – NIDDK (nih.gov)
- Dietary Guidelines for Americans | health.gov
- How Long Does It Take for Your Body to Adjust to Eating Healthy? | Institute for Integrative Nutrition
- How fast should you change your diet to lose weight? – Harvard Health
- Changing diets at scale (nature.com)
- How To Start An Elimination Diet | Henry Ford Health – Detroit, MI
- Sustainable Diets as Tools to Harmonize the Health of Individuals, Communities and the Planet: A Systematic Review – PMC (nih.gov)
- Dietary patterns and cancer risk | Nature Reviews Cancer
- Priority Nutrition Strategy: Food Service and Nutrition Guidelines | Nutrition | CDC
- Move Your Way® Community Resources | health.gov
- Negative Reactions to Eating Healthier | University of Utah Health
- Nutrient Recommendations and Databases (nih.gov)
If you are interested to learn more, please visit the following links:
On-demand Or Forced Feeding? | Learn Nutrition Online (learnutritiononline.com)
Key definitions:
“Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA): Average daily level of intake sufficient to meet the nutrient requirements of nearly all (97–98%) healthy individuals; often used to plan nutritionally adequate diets for individuals.” (12)
“Adequate Intake (AI): Intake at this level is assumed to ensure nutritional adequacy; established when evidence is insufficient to develop an RDA.” (12)