MOSCOW, June 5, Tatyana Pichugina. The Bragg system, Montignac, separate nutrition, the Kremlin diet — health monitors will surely remember these methods that were popular in the 1990s. They were replaced by Mediterranean and Scandinavian menus, pescatarianism, paleo diet. The next fashion is proper nutrition, abbreviated as PP. understood — is it really something new or just a well-forgotten old one.In articles about PP, course programs and blogging marathons, the well-known things attract attention. First of all, it is recommended to make a diet for a week or a month. Products should be varied in order to supply the body with the necessary amount of nutrients and trace elements. It is advised to have a hearty breakfast in order to recharge your batteries for the day, gradually eliminate the «harmful» — white bread, sugar, low-fat foods. Meals should be regular, every three to four hours. It is better to focus on the feeling of hunger and drink enough fluids.
«Proper nutrition is not a scientific term. It means a balanced and varied diet that is adequate to the physiological needs of a person. A healthy diet is given to many with great difficulty. It is psychologically difficult to make a daily choice in favor of broccoli and buckwheat without salt. Therefore, when some a person who knows how to do complex things correctly, and at the same time quickly and easily do complex things, people willingly believe him,» comments Ekaterina Kashukh, candidate of medical sciences, gastroenterologist at the Hemotest Laboratory.
name: proper, rational or adaptive nutrition, all this is designed to ensure human health, adds the head of the scientific direction «Optimal nutrition» of the Federal Research Center «Nutrition and Biotechnology», Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor Alexander Baturin.
«Food science has its own laws. First, the concept of the energy value of products. Energy comes to us only from the outside, with food. Imbalance leads either to weight loss or weight gain, «says the scientist.
To be healthy, you need nutrients — only about two hundred. «No product contains all of them, except for breast milk, but it is enough only for a child under six years old. Then you need to expand the menu,» says Professor Baturin.
Each product has an original composition, and if you eat monotonously, you can earn nutritional deficiencies. “We need different products: cereals, dairy, vegetables and fruits, fish and much more,” the expert enumerates. “If they are not enough, a person runs the risk of getting sick.”
The advice of numerous network experts is not this or that is not always justified. For example, the recommendation is not to eat bread, because there are a lot of carbohydrates, and they make you fat. «It's not fair! They take a thin piece, put a thick slice of sausage on top and believe that they have gained weight from bread,» Alexander Baturin explains.
Or let's say potatoes. According to the expert, they began to consume less of it, despite the fact that it is also a vegetable. It has a lot of carbohydrates, but there is also enough protein, and most importantly, it is an excellent source of potassium, ascorbic acid and dietary fiber contained in the peel. No wonder baby potatoes are now popular, which are grown in a special way to get small tubers. In restaurants, it is prepared «in uniform». But peeled and especially soaked potatoes before cooking lose most of their useful properties, since the concentration of nutrients and vitamins increases from the center to the peel. «And you don't have to chase amaranth, quinoa or wild salmon,» the scientist concludes.
Tasty to eat and do not get sick
They say that proper nutrition helps to avoid illness. Apparently, this is indeed the case. It is known that adjusting the diet reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes.
In 1995, the USDA released the Healthy Eating Index (HEI). This is a questionnaire with questions about what and how a person eats. The stronger the commitment to a healthy style, the higher the index. And the higher it is in the whole population or some group of people (for example, age groups), the healthier it is. According to research, a higher index in men reduced the risk of all chronic diseases by 11 percent. In women, this dependence was much worse.
Ten years later, Harvard Medical School developed an Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI), which took into account, among other things, the risk of developing cancer, separated saturated and unsaturated fats, forms of carbohydrates and protein sources. If a commitment to healthy eating is appreciatedusing HEI-2005 was associated with a 16 percent reduction in the risk of major chronic diseases, a similar study assessed by AHEI-2010 showed a risk reduction of 19 percent. At the same time, people who followed the diet suffered from heart disease and diabetes were 31 and 33 percent less likely, respectively. These summarizing studies suggest that a healthy or proper diet serves to prevent diseases that are becoming common causes of premature death.
But this is in general. In recent years, scientists have come close to answering the question of the role of nutrition in the development of certain chronic diseases, as well as cancer. In a recent article, Russian scientists tried to understand the causes of the metabolic syndrome. This is a dangerous condition that has several symptoms at once — high blood pressure, impaired lipid and carbohydrate metabolism, and glucose tolerance. There is no general treatment, while the risk of diabetes mellitus and coronary heart disease increases.
The authors of the work suggested that unhealthy diet plays a role here. It inhibits the microorganisms that live in the intestines, which, in turn, leads to metabolic disorders, chronic inflammation, and this is the basis for failures in the body. 128 people with metabolic syndrome and 25 healthy volunteers were selected for the study. The survey showed that almost all patients have an unhealthy, high-calorie diet and they do not move enough. So, in the prevention and treatment of this kind of ailments, special attention should be paid to nutrition.
Where to get information about healthy eating
In general, the principles of PP appear in one way or another in the recommendations of regulatory bodies in different countries. Just look at the «healthy food plate» designed at the Harvard School of Public Health, the food pyramid created in the USA in the 1990s, or read the pageWHO dedicated to this topic. Yes, and in folklore from time immemorial, such advice has been presented: «Eat breakfast yourself, share lunch with a friend, and give dinner to the enemy», An apple a day keeps the doctor away (one apple a day will save you from a visit to the doctor). Something followers add from popular literature. For example, from the books of the American journalist Mike Pollan «The Rules of Food», the recommendations «Eat only what you have prepared yourself», «Get up from the table a little hungry» and the like have migrated to the pages of bloggers.
«The simplest and shortest advice can be formulated as follows: more vegetables, fruits, berries, nuts and seeds, fish and seafood. Less red and processed meat, salt, sugar and alcohol,» Ekaterina Kashukh formulates and adds that for most people this is no secret, they perfectly understand what to eat. It's no secret that zucchini and leafy greens are healthy, but sugar and sausage are not.
The principles of healthy eating have been repeatedly stated in the scientific literature and from there they got to the websites of public organizations. According to WHO recommendations from 2018, the diet should include at least 400 grams of fruits and vegetables per day, that's five servings, no more than 50 grams of sugar and no more than five grams of salt (preferably iodized). From fats, preferably unsaturated fats, no more than 30 percent of daily energy should come. u>».