What is dietetics? Science or street expressions?

1996/06/01 Lorenzo, Arantza | Uranga, Ane Miren Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Dietetika/Elikagaiak

Most of society hears the term dietary and limits it to products sold in herbaceous plants (ginseng, real food…) and to the advice given there, even if it is a much broader and deeper concept. Dietetics is mainly related to the sciences that study food and the processes that take place in the human body, such as bromatology, nutrition or physiology.

For example, bromatology explores the details of food, that is, the different steps that must follow the products obtained from agriculture, livestock and fishing until we reach our table; therefore, within this field we could frame gastronomy.

Nutrition, for its part, focuses on the ingredients of food and the parts of its direction in our body: digestion, absorption, metabolism, etc. Based on previous knowledge, dietetics investigate what foods and how much the body needs in different situations (parenting, pregnancy, athletes) to maintain health and prevent disease.

And finally, food is putting all this knowledge into practice. Once the health or disease situation of each person is known, it shows what to do and the steps to take to carry out or implement a specific diet. An adequate diet is therefore the one that meets all the needs of each one, thus leaving optimal health. In the same way, it is an inadequate diet that prevents maintaining an adequate state of health by excess or defect.

And how does that happen in our society? As is known, one of the most serious problems of today’s “advanced” societies is that we consume superfluous foods, which causes overweight or obesity. On the other hand, the really necessary foods are consumed less than enough and hence diseases such as anemia, decalcification, which today are so common.

Just as medicine deals with life, we can say it helps to live longer by taking care of dietary health.

Brief

• Last August
  Anderson and his team of researchers analyzed the characteristics of soy in the United States. From this study it was deduced that soy protein reduces the levels of general cholesterol in blood, LDL cholesterol and triglyceride. However, there is still a long way to go so that the results of this research are fully accepted. The amount of soy that guarantees these effects is yet to be determined.
• In a research program
  carried out in Barcelona in which the brothers Tinajas Ruiz concluded that intense exercise reduces hunger. It is not yet clear what are the causes of this process, but the first hypotheses point to the transient impediment generated by intense exercise. However, by not exercising or practicing it more slowly, the same does not happen. The practice of intense or slow activity does not affect the amount of food ingested below, but it has been stated that liquids and carbohydrate-rich products are preferred.