About food culture

If there were such a surplus of food products in the world today that would make their free choice possible, this would save more than 8,000 million people from severe forms of starvation. In addition, many people would stop suffering from other serious nutritional defects, for example, from excess carbohydrate nutrition, which leads to obesity with all the ensuing serious consequences. Nevertheless, as special analysis conducted in various countries shows, sufficient production of food products in itself does not ensure the maintenance of human health at an optimal level. A high culture of nutrition is necessary. Moreover, it is necessary to ensure that broader culture, which should be called trophological, includes, in addition to the culture of nutrition, the culture of production (including agriculture, ecology, industrial technologies), distribution and storage of food.

Until recently, the culture of the human body was considered primarily physical. However, the culture of the body is much more complex and broader and should include many aspects of biology, including genetic, ecological, biochemical, physiological, trophological, etc. Trophological culture implies understanding and using in the daily life of each person and society as a whole the basic laws of metabolism and nutrition patterns that ensure optimal functioning of the body, with adjustments for existing living conditions, climate, work, etc. Trophological culture of nutrition includes understanding not only the rules of food consumption, but also all stages of work on food products in agriculture and the food industry (at various food and canning industry enterprises) and, of course, in trade. We are talking about observing not only hygienic, but also "biological" rules. It is also clear that a trophological culture can only be built on the basis of scientific approaches that make it possible to justify not only the correct consumption of food products, but also their production, processing, storage and distribution.

The culture of nutrition is a part of the trophological culture. This is fair, since without some level of the culture of nutrition it is extremely difficult to solve a number of global problems, including the problem of defeating hunger and many terrible diseases of our century (atherosclerosis, cardiovascular diseases, some malignant neoplasms, diabetes, gastrointestinal tract disorders and many others), as well as the problem of combating the aging of the body.

In the light of the concept of trophological culture, a number of problems should be considered, including appetite regulation. We have already mentioned that humans probably have a partially impaired amazing ability to regulate food consumption, which is characteristic of animals. Regulation of food consumption is one of the most important mechanisms of homeostasis, which ensures the maintenance of the constancy of the molecular composition of the organism. At the same time, this mechanism is one of the most vulnerable due to many circumstances.

Appetite and nutrition control have evolved and are based on a specific system of signals. Incorrect food education and incorrect human eating behavior in the absence of a food culture lead to numerous errors in the operation of appetite-regulating mechanisms. The most common of these errors is overeating one type of food and undereating others. Already within the framework of the theory of balanced nutrition, models of ideal food and ideal nutrition were formulated to overcome this fundamental defect. However, from the standpoint of the theory of adequate nutrition, food cannot be ideal. A more appropriate concept is adequate food, which varies widely depending on external conditions and the functional state of the body.

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 various metabolic systems of the body, must be considered from the point of view of trophological culture, including nutrition culture. It should be noted that some "nutritional schools" and trends using certain types and modes of nutrition often achieve significant success, since, by influencing certain forms of metabolism, they achieve useful results. However, in some cases, the effects are, unfortunately, short-term, and sometimes undesirable. This is why the nutrition culture must be formed under the supervision of specialists - doctors and teachers, taking into account long-term experience and the latest achievements of science, in order to consciously ("noospherically") optimize nutrition, which in humans has largely lost its instinctive regulation.

At present, it is difficult to characterize all the features of the food culture. At the same time, some of its features are obvious. Food culture is a consciously organized, possibly more optimal (adequate) satisfaction of food needs based on the achievements of trophology, humanity and within the capabilities of the economy, ecology, etc. It is also necessary to keep in mind the evolutionary features of the human organism. In light of this, polymeric food is adequate, not monomeric (elemental). It is also absolutely clear that endoecology cannot be neglected. 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 symbiotic interactions have been established.

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