Nutrition and Health

Today an understanding of the importance of proper nutrition throughout a person’s lifetime is an irreducible part of healthcare education. The impact of good nutrition has been shown to both extend the lifespan and to enhance the quality of life. Today there is a rich field of research data that clearly demonstrates a reciprocal link between good nutrition and optimal health. Nutrition has only recently become a topic of importance as it relates to a person’s healthy development and lifestyle. The history of nutrition awareness in America is somewhat confined to the last several decades when the emphasis on nutrition and daily exercise caught on in the 1980s. A new consciousness came into being in which the value of proper nutrition was associated not only with health and wellness but also a reduced incidence of diseases like diabetes, cancer, heart disease and stroke.

There is an opportunity to explore the development of nutrition consciousness and health and fitness issues in American culture and evaluate the data pools that demonstrate the value of nutrition in health maintenance. One hundred years ago the word nutrition did not have the same prominence or meaning in American culture, there was no such thing as nutrition labeling and food choices were largely a matter of conditioning through the family. Because nutrition was not a priority people routinely ate poorly and in a manner that showed a complete lack of awareness for the negative impact of poor or improper nutrition. Today even people who ignore the benefits of good nutrition are at the very least aware of the subject and the outlines. Most people are aware that saturated fats on a routine basis are an ill-advised diet. They know that overeating and lack of exercise have consequences for their health. Exploring the covariates that conclusively link excess weight or obesity with poor or deteriorating health, researchers isolate a series of established patterns that operate across racial/ethnic lines, age-categories and other important social or economic determinants (Lynch et al). The cumulative data reveals a striking correlation between excess weight and reduced quality of life, entailing a number of weight-related illnesses from diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

In the 1950s nutrition counseling was unheard of, although there were standard NRC recommendations for dietary considerations. Today the advances in nutrition scholarship and research have determined the significant impact that proper nutrition can have on an individual’s health and longevity. Long-term nutrition studies have revealed progressive evidence that established early patterns of nutrition consciousness produce notable positive health effects in adults, alongside other environmental and behavioral factors. Nutrition is now considered a science, complete with research data and clear models for optimal health. For these reasons the importance of proper nutrition demands a place in grade schools where eating patterns for children are in their early stages and subject to healthy deviation. One of the major benefits of recent nutrition consciousness is that schools are adopting healthy-eating models in line with state-level mandates for proper nutrition.

According to established research, the objectives for a greater focus on teaching nutrition in schools have resulted in newly established standards in a number of states. Emphasizing proper nutrition at the stage where children develop their eating patterns can have a significant impact on their adult eating patterns and questions of obesity and physical inactivity linked to heart disease and diabetes (Gunderson et al). The article goes on to discuss and highlight the interdependent policies and approaches being implemented in schools to modify the poor nutrition habits of school children. Because the approach is relatively recent there is inconclusive study data to reveal its level of effectiveness thus far, however, the very fact that such responsible initiatives are in play is encouraging—given the obesity epidemic among school children. The approach is not taught as an alternative but rather a framework of behavioral guidelines that stress health responsibility through education and behavioral modification. Although researchers have discovered conflicting data between children in food-secure environments and children in food-insecure environments the strongest factors influencing nutrition habits are commercial media and family (Drotz 19). Because the nutrition patterns established in childhood exert an irreducible impact on adult eating habits it is critically important to stress proper nutrition at the earliest possible stage to ensure that children do not fall prey to commercialized food choices.

Commercial marketing trends common to western nations, along with mass-consumption patterns play a crucial role in the sweeping lifestyle changes affecting large areas of this region. The impact that these changes are having on the health of populations whose traditional cultures are forced into globalized economic models is explored further. Fast-food models from America are now a common sight in foreign nations where twenty years ago they would have been considered unthinkable. This relatively new phenomenon reveals that poverty and high malnutrition complicate any awareness of nutritional food alternatives. Westernized fast-food models have spread so rapidly—along with the negative impact on nutrition—that many of the traditional dietary habits are being replaced simply due to economic stresses and efficiency. This pattern in effect exports poor nutrition to other cultures as well as the predictable health fallout associated with it. In nations where obesity was uncommon decades ago the rising incidence of obesity points to the adoption of these food-choice patterns. To an extent, globalization is a multi-faceted proposition because the trend not only creates a globalized economy in which labor enters a larger competition scale, these commercially instilled food choice patterns are also part of this equation (Debruyne 24). Where many traditional cultural diets were adequate in the nutrition that they provided, these diets are now being replaced by cheaper, mass-produced dietary guidelines that exclude any consideration of nutrition.

Obesity is often misunderstood because of the compulsivity of attention to image, striving to fit a media image is trivial when considering the health problems associated with being overweight or obese. And significantly part of the problem is that obese people are affected by the psychological reaction to popular image, to fitting in or not. For many being overweight or obese might be tied to emotional or psychological issues, and the popular ideas of the perfect image may only worsen this sense of imperfection (Lynch et al). Food is too often associated with comfort and compensation. Image distorts the problem of obesity and makes it something else, it isn’t fashion or style, it isn’t a social statement, but it is a growing medical issue for many of the reasons discussed. The problem is how to approach obesity as a huge health crisis in a culture that is addicted to image and convenience? This is a problem that offers very few solutions other than basic education and the desire to simply regain a healthy approach to eating. Obese people cannot be placed in a category of image because this only clouds the issue, it isn’t important when held against the potential for early heart attacks and diabetes, and many other health problems that go along with it. We have been convinced that image is the main problem in obesity. Beyond the obscuring collision of image and health, the magnitude of the crisis is showing no sign of abating in spite of the adoption and visibility of nutrition awareness and other concerted initiatives to teach nutrition.

In essence, food preferences are associated with stimulation response, sugar is a stimulant and children grow to crave this stimulation. Although people typically change their eating patterns as adults, many do not and this results in a number of significant health risks that are linked to obesity or being overweight. Exploring the psychology of food patterns is as much a cultural phenomenon as a psychological one, and nutritional psychology seeks to uncover the relevant explanations for why people make these choices and how the patterns that follow from the choices can be corrected with common-sense recommendations and the necessary motivation to place nutrition alongside other health priorities (Lynch et al). Food counseling may sound odd or unusual to someone from a part of the world where positive nutrition patterns are the established norm, and where vegetables and fish may dominate diet. However, in developed heavily commercialized cultures such as America, there is a concerted effort by food manufacturers to consciously confuse the message of good nutrition and health.

American consumers are typically bombarded with impulse-centered imagery of food as a false-comfort stimulant. The cumulative effect of this form of overt commercial behavioral-steering is that Americans have established themselves among the highest obesity statistics and a spate of critical health issues that are a direct result of these ill-advised eating patterns. The popular psychology accorded food today is that of instant gratification, and the process of transition took decades of habit-molding by fast-food advertisers. The fallout is as appalling as it might have been preventable if people were equally informed about the value of nutrition on their health. Simple choices can mean the difference between unhealthy and healthy lifestyles. The dominant behavioral psychology is skewed toward poor nutrition (Gunderson et al). A significant part of the issue is that people do not understand the primary function of food, as our society and culture have undergone rapid commercial and technological changes over the last thirty years, our shared ideas about food and eating have also changed. At its basic level food is a biological necessity to be regulated accordingly with a specific environment. The environment exerts perhaps the greatest influence on eating patterns. The demand for proper nutrition is a fundamental part of the natural order of community in many parts of the world. Mass-production and commercialization of food products in the late part of the twentieth century has created a kind of cult of abuse in which food choices are made out of frivolous impulse or image association and not the dictates of proper nutrition. The health issues associated with poor nutrition in America are irreducible, and a direct consequence of the commercial aggression that has been a common feature of the fast-food industry.

In low-income demographics, poor nutrition is significantly higher because of the economic impact on choice. In an era of competing dollar menus and direct appeals to the wallet, American nutritional patterns continue to deteriorate and produce record rates of preventable disease, illness and mortality (Campbell 8). The immutable impasse between nutrition consciousness and the barrage of seductive bad food choices shows no sign of lessening. Although nutrition counseling is regarded as a legitimate and necessary arm of medical science the disposition of nutrition psychology suffers from a lack of understanding. The word itself has a bland, unexciting ring to it in the midst of the commercial food frenzy that bids for the attention of consumers. Decades into the health crisis of poor nutrition the obvious message remains peripheral, people simply regard their eating patterns as elective and not gradually imposed. Given the stalemate between optimal nutrition awareness and the prominent lag-factors that tend to cripple this awareness the possibility of imposing a rational basis for food choice cannot be successfully implemented. It remains an accompanying irony that those nations that are considerably less developed than America enjoy a significantly higher level of nutrition.

Works Cited

Campbell, T. Colin, and Thomas M. Campbell. The China study: the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted and the startling implications for diet, weight loss and long-term health. Dallas, Tex.: BenBella Books, 2005. Print.

DeBruyne, Linda K., and Kathryn Pinna. Nutrition for health and health care. 5th ed. Australia: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2013. Print.

Drotz, Keeley C. The poisoning of our children: fighting the obesity epidemic in America. New York: TGBG Nutrition, 2012. Print.

Gunderson, C. et al, Child-specific food insecurity and overweight are not associated in a Sample group of 10 to 15 year old low-income youth, The Journal of Nutrition. 2011 Web.

Larson, N. et al, A review of environmental influences on food choices. The Society of Behavioral Medicine, 38(suppl 1) iS56-S73, DOI 10. 1007s 2009

Lynch, N. et al, Excess weight and health-related quality of life in post-menopausal women Of diverse racial/ethnic background, Journal of Women’s Health, Vol 19, No 8 2009