Healthy Diet Characteristics and Factors Affecting Dietary Choices

In my previous post, I discussed the connection between nutrition and chronic diseases, noting the importance of wise dietary choices in increasing the likelihood for a long and healthful life.  Only two lifestyle choices, that of tobacco and alcohol usage, have a greater influence on health than that of diet.  What, then, differentiates wise dietary choices from unwise ones?  Consider that an average person consumes more than 70,000 meals in his or her lifetime.  During this period, he or she will have disposed of over 100,000 pounds of food and will have replaced nearly all cells in the body many times over.  Each of the dietary choices made along the way contributes to the current state of your health (Sizer & Whitney, 2013).  Thus, the old saying "you are what you eat" is very true.  It is important, then, that your diet provide the materials needed to support the development and maintenance of muscles, bones, skin, blood, and other components making up your body.  Deficiencies in any of the components required by your body will eventually have an adverse affect on your body, including increased risk of disease or impaired function (Sizer & Whitney, 2013).

The Characteristics of a Healthy Diet

A healthy diet is something that cannot be adopted overnight.  Instead, it is learned and then repeated until it becomes a habit.  It is a lifestyle involving the consumption of food that exhibits five primary characteristics, including that of adequacy, balance, calorie control, moderation, and variety.  Adequacy in the diet refers to the supply of nutrients required by the body and whether they are sufficient in quantity.  For instance, the body requires vitamin A for immune functions and eyesight.  Iron is an essential nutrient for muscular activity and neurological health.  Not getting enough of any of the essential nutrients will have an adverse effect on health (Sizer & Whitney, 2013).

The concept of balance in the diet refers to the fact that no single food contains sufficient quantities of all 40 or so required nutrients.  Therefore, one must balance the consumption foods, so that the aggregate supplies the nutrients needed by the body to function properly.  For example, iron and calcium are rarely sufficiently present in a single food, but the body requires both.  Thus, it is necessary to eat a food that is rich in calcium and eat another food that is rich in iron.  All the while, it is important that excess consumption of any one nutrient is avoided.  This leads to the next subject, which is calorie control.  Calories are a measurement of the energy a food contains.  In a healthy diet, the body must not consume less energy than it needs in a given time period, nor should it consume more energy than it needs.  Consuming less or more energy than is required will result in weight loss or gain, respectively, both of which can have adverse effects on health (Sizer & Whitney, 2013).

It is also important to practice moderation in the consumption of certain food components.  Items such as fat, salt, and sugar, can have many negative impacts to health if consumed in excess.  Thus, their intakes should be moderated.  In addition to negative food constituents, even essential nutrients should be limited, as they can be often be harmful if taken in excess.  Finally, variety in the diet ensures that people do not consume the same foods every day.  This is important, in part, because of the possibility of contaminants and toxins that may be present in a given food.  Further, consumption of a variety of foods increases the likelihood that sufficient nutrients will be obtained by the aggregate of foods (Sizer & Whitney, 2013).

The Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) are established by a panel of nutrition experts and are published in the United States and Canada.  The DRI provides dietary guidelines on the consumption of carbohydrates, fiber, lipids, protein, water, energy, vitamins, and minerals, to ensure adequate nutrition is received for the majority of people.  Since no two people are exactly the same, nor are the nutritional needs of differing groups of people, the DRI provides specialized dietary recommendations for specific groups of people, including men, women, pregnant women, children.  Moreover, recommendations vary depending on the age range of each group.  Consequently, individuals can easily determine the relevant recommendations in a manner that is highly detailed for their particular circumstances.  On average, most people should strive to obtain 100 percent of the DRI intake recommendations for each of the nutrients, to ensure a healthy diet (Sizer & Whitney, 2013).

Complementing the DRI, the United States Department of Agriculture updates and publishes the Dietary Guidelines every five years.  These are used to provide guidance to Americans in establishing a healthy eating plan.  In recognizing the trends of obesity, diabetes, and other diet-related chronic diseases, the latest Dietary Guidelines established several key recommendations, covering four major areas.  These were to 1) balance calories, 2) eat more nutrient-dense foods, 3) eat less of certain foods, and 4) build a healthy eating pattern (Sizer, & Whitney, 2013).

In general, the Dietary Guidelines recommends that people should eat more fruits, vegetables, fish and seafood, whole grains, and low-fat milk products.  In contrast, Americans should reduce intakes of refined grains, solid fats, added sugars, and salt.  To help people understand and manage the recommendations more easily, the Dietary Guidelines makes use of a food group plan, which categorizes foods into five distinct groups.  The five food groups consist of Fruits, Vegetables, Grains, Protein Foods, and Dairy.  The food groups ensure that a diet will be balanced and span a variety of foods within a given group.  An illustration of the food groups and their related portions is provided below.

The Five Food Groups of the Dietary Guidelines (USDA, 2014)

The proportions of each group and quantity within a given group are provided in further detail in the Dietary Guidelines.  A wide variety of tasty meals can be made, while still being nutritiously healthy.  In fact, there is an entire Pinterest page dedicated solely to recipes that comply with the Dietary Guidelines and its government supported campaign, known as MyPlate.

The Challenges of Choosing a Healthy Diet

Despite the wealth of tasty and healthy recipes available, many find it difficult to know what foods to eat and to which extent.  For starters, there is much ambiguity in the marketplace as to what is healthy and what is not.  Food manufacturers have a fair amount of flexibility in what is place on food labels and the claims used by many skirt around regulations to cause consumer confusion.  Compared to the limited food choices a century ago, today's food choices can be mind-boggling.  The foods of a century ago were largely unprocessed and often can directly from the farm.  In contrast, today's food offerings are often refined, processed, packaged, and often have many additives to ensure shelf longevity and appealing taste.  Portion sizes have also increased substantially over the past several decades, particularly in fast food and full-service restaurants.  It is challenging to find products that do not contain added sugars or have refined grains.  Unfortunately, many Americans have become accustomed to eating convenient foods, loaded with calories and unhealthy additives, and in substantial portion sizes (Sizer & Whitney, 2013).

Adding to the the difficulties of healthful dietary choices is the fact that even in the schools, the menu choices have traditionally not been health oriented.  Items offered in school cafeterias that have high concentrations of fat or sugar, such as pizza, fries, desserts, burgers, and soda have encouraged children from eating healthy.  Such offerings from schools have not contributed to increasing awareness of the dangers in consuming such foods.  Fortunately, recent efforts are being made to raise awareness and offer more health-conscious foods in public schools (Lytton, 2010).  It has also been observed that kids respond heavily to food advertisements and can exert influence on whether these food products are purchased.  Moreover, traditional pro-nutrition campaigns have done little to deter children from wanting unhealthy foods, as improving nutritional knowledge alone is ineffective.  Instead, research has shown that nutritional messages tailored to children have much more efficacy in this regard.  For instance, it was found that a cartoon illustrating the harmful effects of sugary snacks and foods was able to influence children more more effectively than previous formal campaigns (Hota, Cáceres, & Cousin, 2010).  It has also been suggested that even the governing body making dietary guideline recommendations operates with many conflicts of interest, thereby purposely adding ambiguity in the recommendations (Gustafson, 2014).

Factors Affecting Dietary Choices

There are many factors that drive the food choices people make, including social and cultural, psychological, philosophical, and physical factors.  From a social and cultural perspective, a person's heritage plays a large role in the types of food consumed.  People of Mediterranean descent, for instance, often tend to eat a diet rich in fish and oils, but low in red meat.  The social circumstances of today expose people from different ethnic backgrounds to try new types of foods.  For instance, a person may try Indian cuisine for the first time when dining with coworkers.  In terms of psychological influences, the advertisement of food products heavily influences the food choices of Americans.  Other psychological aspects that influence food choice are whether someone finds emotional comfort in a given food or being in the habit of eating a particular food (Sizer & Whitney, 2013).

Many people have philosophical beliefs that lead them to choose certain foods over others, or avoid certain foods altogether.  For instance, certain religions consider discourage the consumption of pork or meet altogether.  Other religions discourage the consumption of food that isn't prepared in a certain way.  There are also people that believe consumption of animal meat is disrespectful of animals and, as a consequence, choose to eat a plant-based diet.  Finally, there are physical aspects that govern the food choices of a great many people.  In America, many citizens are fortunate to have access to a large variety of foods.  However, this is not necessarily so in many poverty-stricken parts of the world.  In many cases, people simply do not have access to certain foods, either because it is not present in the environment or because they cannot afford it.  Consequently, many people in the world must eat what they have access, which often leads to severe malnutrition and its related health risks (Sizer & Whitney, 2013).

Conclusion

Eating a diet with sufficient quantities of nutrient-dense foods, from each of the five food groups, will ensure the body has the nutrients necessary to function properly.  Although making wise food choices can be difficult, Americans have many tools at their disposal to make informed decisions, including the DRI and Dietary Guidelines.  While the Internet provides a wealth of healthy recommendations and recipes, it is vital to obtain the information from only well-respected sources, to guard against ambiguity and misleading information.  The resources available allow most Americans to choose healthy diets that still conform to philosophical and cultural beliefs.

References

Gustafson, C. (2014). Michael Greger, MD: Reversing Chronic Disease Through Diet; Addressing the 2015 USDA Dietary Guidelines Committee. Integrative Medicine: A Clinician's Journal, 13(2), 22-24.

Hota, M., Cáceres, R. C., & Cousin, A. (2010). Can Public-Service Advertising Change Children's Nutrition Habits?. Journal Of Advertising Research, 50(4), 460-477.

Lytton, T. D. (2010). AN EDUCATIONAL APPROACH TO SCHOOL FOOD: USING NUTRITION STANDARDS TO PROMOTE HEALTHY DIETARY HABITS. Utah Law Review, 2010(4), 1189-1221.

Sizer, F., & Whitney, E. (2013). Nutrition: Concepts and Controversies (13th ed.). Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.

USDA. (2014). Build a Healthy Meal. Retrieved from Choose My Plate: http://www.choosemyplate.gov/food-groups/downloads/TenTips/DGTipsheet7BuildAHealthyMeal.pdf

USDA. (2014). Choose My Plate My Plate Graphic. Retrieved from Choose My Plate: http://www.choosemyplate.gov/images/MyPlateImages/JPG/myplate_green.jpg