Experts Are Thinking About What You Eat. Maybe You Should Join Them.
Edited content by Jennifer Huget for Washington Post
It is quite a challenge even for a registered dietician to plan a day's meals based on the standard dietary recommended daily allowance (RDA) guidelines. If a professional finds it hard to wrestle all those RDA’s and Adequate intakes into a reasonable meal plan, how on Earth amateurs can?
However, help is on the way…
A panel of scientists, nutritionists, epidemiologists and physicians is working to revise “the document known as the Dietary Guidelines”, which is updated every five years. Assembled late last year, the panel of 13 were mandated with reviewing the best scientific evidence and using that information to craft the 2010 guidelines.
The Dietary Guidelines can help form nutrition policies, including school lunch programs etc too.
Among the experts invited to address the panel was Adam Drewnowski, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington's Centre for Public Health Nutrition. Some of the question asked were answered by Adam Drewnowski were related to ongoing efforts to devise a new food-labelling system that takes into account not only calories and nutrients but also the price per unit of nutrient.
1. What major change would you like to see in the guidelines?
My hope is that they will at least take the economics of nutrition into account, really think through about real foods for real people. Dietary choices are economic decisions, like everything else. Many good foods cost more -- but they don't have to. I'd like to see a focus on affordable, nutrient-rich foods by category. They do exist; not everything nutritious is expensive. For instance, with vegetables the focus has been on fresh salad greens. But there are cheaper vegetables that provide a whole range of nutrients: cabbage, carrots, potatoes. Potatoes have been completely ignored, but they're very nutritious, low-calorie, full of potassium and fiber, and low-cost. And it's hard to beat the nutrients-per-cost of beans, eggs and milk, especially powdered milk, soups. . . . We need to advise people what those foods are, where you can get them and how to cook them. Foods we've always known are good and nutritious -- and inexpensive.
2. What about delicious?
Unless we aid the public in identifying foods that are nutrient-rich and affordable -- and are enjoyable in the mainstream diet, there's no point telling people to buy lots of lentils and eat lentils for a week. Or recommending that people eat Brussels sprouts. That's very nice -- I love Brussels sprouts. But will most people eat them?
Not every food you consume has to be [the most nutritious], but the combination [of some more nutritious foods with others], we hope, will lead to a better diet. When we want to change the population's diet for the better, everybody says stop eating oils, sugar, and go with leafy greens. That's dramatic. Instead, nudge your diet toward foods that are more rich in nutrients of interest.
3. Is steering people toward affordable, nutritious foods enough to get everyone eating healthfully?
No. You have to know something about nutrition -- and you have to know how to cook. It takes a bit of time, but not an inordinate amount. In addition to time, though, it takes some education, cooking skills, culinary culture and infrastructure: pots, pans, a stove. For a lot of people, those things are slipping out of reach.
Some people assume that everyone makes a decision about what to put in their mouth. But after a day's work, coming home to their apartment, some people have no decisions left, so they take junk out of the freezer. It is said that most of them don't have options!
Eating well is a matter of knowledge, money and time. Some people are zero.
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