What is Nutrition?
Nutrition is all about getting the vital nutrients that our bodies need, i.e. what our bodies cannot sufficiently produce on their own. We obtain these nutrients typically through our diet. Good nutrition implies meeting the recommended quantity of these required nutrients. However, nowadays, there is an increased focus on the quality of these nutrients as well. Inadequate quantity and quality can lead to diseases associated with specific nutrient deficiencies, and ultimately malnutrition.
What is a Diet?
A diet is simply just a summarized description of the food that one eats regularly. With this in mind, everyone is on a diet! There is a common misconception that diets are only for weight loss or weight gain. While diet comes into conversation mostly surrounding these two topics, it’s important to know what the word primarily means.
Which Diet is the best?
Unfortunately, this is where nutrition starts to get exhausting. There are so many different diets with all these fancy names and they all have passionate practitioners who will claim that their diet is the best. I am not interested in arguing about semantics though, I just want to know what foods are best for promoting vitality and longevity of my body. Fortunately, I am not alone in this quest! There are great public guidelines already for what a healthy diet should look like:
- Healthy Eating Plate by the Harvard School of Public Health
This article by Harvard gives a beautifully simple visualization and description of what a healthy diet should entail. - Healthy Diet by the World Health Organization (WHO)
This article by the WHO is much more in-depth but is more wordy as a result. It’s very informative but if you’re looking for a quick read, check out the Harvard link instead.
Nutritional requirements
Nutritional requirements are recommendations made by various governing nutritional bodies detailing how much of a particular nutrient the majority of persons in a population should consume- typically to promote health and to avoid deficiency . Correct interpretation of these recommendations is crucial. When reading nutritional requirements for yourself it is important to keep the following in mind:
- How the recommendations were developed
-Understanding the methodology of the studies - What demographics were studied
-Identifying the age, gender, ethnicity, race and geography of the populations - Other factors that may influence nutritional requirements on a personal level
-Growth/size; Pregnancy and Lactation; Diet; and nutrient co-dependencies (absorption of a nutrient maybe be influenced by another)
Don’t worry if this sounds complicated, it’ll make more sense when I look at each nutrient individually.
Here are some real nutritional requirement sources that are publicly available (but no one actually reads):
- Dietary Guidelines for Americans (2020-2025)
-This is a fairly big pdf. The nutritional requirements start in Appendix 1 - Nutrition Requirements by the British Nutrition Foundation(2019)
-This pdf is only 8 pages and is much easier to read - Vitamin and mineral requirements in human nutrition, 2nd edition (WHO + FAO 2004)
-This is a truly amazing reference for learning about everything regarding vitamins and minerals, except that it’s a very heavy read. But don’t worry, I will be using this document as my main reference when it comes to vitamins and minerals.
Lastly, returning to the earlier question “Which diet is best?”…
I believe the best diet is one which generally aligns with the guidelines and nutritional requirements above. Furthermore, it should account for one’s own unique body composition and life circumstances.
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