About the culture of nutrition

If today there was such an excess of food in the world that would make possible their free choice, this would save more than 8000 million people from severe forms of starvation. In addition, many people would cease to suffer from other serious nutritional deficiencies, for example from excess carbohydrate nutrition, leading to obesity with all the ensuing severe consequences. Nevertheless, as shown by the special analysis carried out in various countries, the sufficient production of food products alone does not ensure the maintenance of human health at an optimal level. A high culture of nutrition is needed. Moreover, it is necessary to ensure that a wider culture, which should be called trophological, including, in addition to food culture, a culture of production (including agriculture, ecology, industrial technology), food distribution and storage.

Until recently, the culture of the human body was considered primarily as a physical one. However, the body culture is much more complex and broader and should include many aspects of biology, including genetic, ecological, biochemical, physiological, trophological, etc. Podrophological culture means understanding and using in everyday life of each person and society as a whole the basic laws of metabolism and the laws of nutrition that ensure the optimal life of the organism, with amendments to the existing conditions of life, climate, work, etc. Trophological food culture included It is an understanding of not only the rules of food intake, but also all phases of the food in the agriculture and food industry (at various enterprises of the food and canning industry) and, of course, trade. It is about observing not only hygienic, but also "biological" rules. It is also clear that the trophological culture can be built only on the basis of scientific approaches that allow us to justify not only the proper consumption of food products, but also their production, processing, storage and distribution.

Culture of nutrition is part of the trophic culture. This is true, since without a certain level of food culture it is extremely difficult to solve a number of global problems, including the problem of victory over hunger and many formidable diseases of our century (atherosclerosis, cardiovascular diseases, some malignant neoplasms, diabetes, disorders of the gastrointestinal tract and many others), as well as the problem of fighting the aging of the body.

In the light of the notions of trophic culture, a number of problems should be considered, including the regulation of appetite. We have already mentioned that, probably, a man is partially disturbed by that amazing ability to regulate food intake, which is characteristic of animals. Regulation of food intake - one of the most important mechanisms of homeostasis, ensuring the maintenance of the constancy of the molecular composition of the body. However, this mechanism is one of the most vulnerable due to very many circumstances.

The management of appetite and nutrition was formed in the course of evolution and is based on a certain system of signals. Improper food education and inappropriate human eating habits in the absence of a food culture lead to numerous errors in the functioning of mechanisms that regulate appetite. Of these errors, the most common is overeating of food of one type and malnutrition of others. Already in the framework of the theory of balanced nutrition, in order to overcome this fundamental defect, models of ideal food and ideal nutrition were formulated. However, from the standpoint of the theory of adequate nutrition, food can not be ideal. More appropriate is the idea of adequate food, which varies widely depending on the external conditions and the functional state of the organism.

The ratio of various components in food and the nature of nutrition, which should ensure the effective functioning of the depot and the "exercise" of the various metabolic systems of the body, must be considered from the point of view of trophic culture, including nutrition culture. It should be noted that some "food schools" and currents that use certain types and modes of nutrition often achieve significant success, since they affect useful forms of metabolism and achieve useful results. However, in a number of cases, the effects are, unfortunately, short-lived, and sometimes undesirable. That is why the culture of nutrition should be formed under the control of specialists - doctors and teachers, taking into account the long experience and the latest achievements of science, to consciously ("noosphere") optimize nutrition, which in humans has largely lost its instinctive regulation.

At present it is difficult to characterize all the features of a food culture. However, some of its features are obvious. Nutrition culture is a deliberately organized, perhaps more optimal (adequate) satisfaction of nutritional needs on the basis of advances in trophology, humanity and within the limits of the economy, ecology, etc. It is also necessary to bear in mind the evolutionary features of the human body. In light of this, polymeric food is adequate, and not monomeric (elemental). It is also quite clear that one can not disdain to endoecology. From this point of view, the destructive consequences of the use of antibiotics and self-medication are tragic, since they suppress those bacterial populations that are formed at birth and with which positive symbiontic interactions are established.

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