Nutritional research borrowed a lot of its research methods from pharmacology. Pharmacologists are interested in single isolated drugs and how they affect physiology. The active ingredient is a key factor in pharmacology, and the nutritional equivalent are the studies that investigate the effects of isolated food components, single macronutrients or isolated plant compounds on physiological function. However, while this sort of research may work in pharmacology, it is often not suited to understanding the role of nutrition. Sometimes understanding the effects of isolated nutrients and plant compounds in useful in nutritional research. However, we do not eat isolated compounds but complex mixtures of chemicals that have synergistic and antagonistic properties towards each other. More recently the nutritional research teams have caught up with what nutritionist have known for many centuries. That is that health comes from the whole diet, and the study of whole diets and the interaction of food components in more important than the study of isolated food components or active ingredients.
The study of whole diets has allowed researchers to quantify that which is a high quality diet. In other words a diet that produces positive health effects. A number of such diets have been identified, including the Okinawan diet and the Mediterranean diet, both traditional diets with important health properties. Based on this research a number of new high quality diets have been created, one such diet being the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet. This diet is characterised by emphasising whole grain, fruits and vegetables, while reducing intakes of red and processed meats and sugar. A number of studies have investigated the effects of the DASH diet and generally it has been shown to have positive health effects. For example, in one study1, researchers observed that adherence to the DASH diet guidelines was associated with a reduction in all cause mortality. The dietary components most strongly associated with lower mortality were increased whole grain and reduced red and processed meat consumption.
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