Nutrition is all about preventing ill health and disease. The most obvious examples of this are the nutritional deficiency diseases that result from intakes of essential nutrients that are too low. There exists a threshold for a number of dietary components, below which disease develops. These thresholds are different for each person, but fall usually within a narrow range of values. The known essential components required in the diets of human total about 50 and include roughly 8 to 10 essential amino acids, 9 water soluble vitamins, 4 fat soluble vitamins, 2 essential fatty acids, 6 macrominerals, 9 trace minerals and 6 ultra trace minerals. Water is also required in the diet for obvious reasons. Undoubtedly, some unknown components that are essential to health exist, but these have not yet been scientifically shown to be essential. Arsenic for example is essential in rats, but its essentiality has not been demonstrated in humans. It is likely that unknown essential components are provided by a balanced healthy diet.
Many processed foods are devoid an meaningful levels of essential and nonessential health providing nutrients. In addition, they often contain high amounts of anti-nutrients that actually cause deleterious harm to metabolic regulation. Sugar and trans fats are anti-nutrients.
The diet should also contain other nutrients that while not being essential, provide significant health benefits. Many plants for example contain a range of phytochemicals that are bioavailable in humans and may influence metabolic activity favourably. For example, the polyphenols are a large group of heterogeneous compounds that may possess antioxidant activity in humans. High intakes of polyphenols have been shown to be associated with protection from a number of diseases. The carotenoids are another large group of chemicals that may have beneficial health effects. Plants also contain fibres, many of which have been shown to be useful in maintaining the health of the gastrointestinal tract, particularly the gut bacteria that inhabit the colon. Fibre may be a conditionally essential nutrient. These fibres act as a source of energy for the bacteria, who in return produce a range of essential and nonessential compounds that are subsequently absorbed and may provide significant health effects, including improvements in immunity.
The expense and suffering of drug treatments to nutritional diseases can be avoided by consuming a high quality balanced diet. Around 50 essential components are required in the diet for good health. In addition, fibre, phytonutrient antioxidants and other metabolic modifiers in foods may provide significant health effects. Make sure you get them all in your diet if your health is important to you.
Failing to maintain adequate intakes of the health producing dietary compounds increases the risk of disease. The deleterious health effects of inadequate intakes of the essential compounds are generally well reported as specific deficiency diseases. Such deficiencies when identified can be reversed through addition of the missing component. However, if the intake of essential components is such that the intake is too low to produce health but too high to produce a deficiency disease, a subclinical deficiency can manifest itself. Such a situation leads to idiopathic disease. Suboptimal intakes of the non-essential components can increase the risk of Western lifestyle diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Once dietary disease manifests itself, treating the symptoms with expensive drugs for the remainder of the life of the individual is the only treatment, particularly if the disease is idiopathic in nature. A high quality healthy diet prevents all this unnecessary suffering and expense. Think about it.
Eat Well, Stay Healthy, Protect Yourself
RdB
