Nutrition for all: principles of nutrition selection and menu planning

What is the ideal food? Berthelot's contemporary, the brilliant writer and fellow member of the French Academy Anatole France, twenty years before Berthelot's interview, put the words "ideal food" into the mouth of one of his heroes. The creation of ideal food seemed important for many reasons, and above all because a number of diseases arise from defective nutrition. For example, diabetes, gastrointestinal diseases, liver diseases and atherosclerosis. Defective nutrition is also the cause of disruption of the physiological and mental development of a person.

For a long time, it seemed that the classical theory of balanced nutrition was sufficiently perfect. However, by the end of the 1970s, it became obvious that a fundamentally different theory was needed to describe the processes of nutrition and assimilation of food. Moreover, the new theory of adequate nutrition includes concepts, methods of analysis and evaluation that were not used before, so this theory was considered a revolution in science. The theory of balanced nutrition is one aspect of a more general theory of homeostasis. These processes are physiological.

Later, the theory of ideal nutrition was formed. The idea of ideal food, composed entirely of essential substances in their optimal proportions, turned out to be the most attractive. At the same time, it should be noted that the idea of ideal nutrition ultimately led to a revision of views not only on ideal food and ideal nutrition, but also on the classical theory of balanced nutrition.

One example of the negative consequences of poor nutrition is overeating, which results in excess weight and obesity. But, in addition to its advantages, this theory also has a number of disadvantages.

At present, a new theory of adequate nutrition has been formed, which differs significantly from the classical one. Modern ideas about digestion and nutrition differ significantly from the comparatively simple scheme that was accepted earlier. Ideal nutrition is, first of all, the nutrition of an individual in accordance with his age, constitution, primary and secondary diseases. The main idea concerning ideal food is to ensure the best manifestation of all the body's capabilities and its optimal functioning.

Some types of food are beneficial during heavy physical exertion, while in cases where there is significant psychological stress, a different diet is needed. Moreover, changes in the emotional background also require corresponding changes in the diet. The types of nutrition in hot and cold climates also differ significantly, and the differences in the nutrition of northern and southern peoples cannot be reduced to geographical factors alone.

An ideal diet, designed for one person taking into account their characteristics - gender, age, lifestyle, may be unacceptable for another. For example, it is generally accepted that in order to increase life expectancy, one should eat low-calorie foods. At the same time, even in old age, with intensive work, a fairly high level of nutrition is required - food rich in carbohydrates, fats and proteins of animal origin.

The authors hope that the book will help the reader to determine guidelines in choosing the most suitable type of nutrition, to find their “golden mean”, their ideal diet.

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Some general principles of nutrition, selection and menu planning

The choice of menu depends mainly on the general culture and developed taste of a person and, in particular, of course, on his culinary culture and knowledge.

At the same time, it is necessary to categorically dispel the misconception that the material factor plays a decisive role in choosing a good, culinary-sound menu. As the entire history of the development of cooking shows, no wealth, no material opportunities can save an uncultured person from improper nutrition, from a complete inability to determine a normal, tasty, healthy menu for himself.

Quite the contrary. It is the rich who are the subject of ridicule throughout world literature due to their inability to eat properly and their inability to determine an acceptable and truly tasty menu for themselves. In this regard, both Mitrofanushka by Fonvizin and the Russian merchants in the plays by A.N. Ostrovsky are indicative. It is always no accident that a character is chosen to illustrate lack of culture, who, despite his opportunities, does not know how, is not able to determine a normal menu for himself.

The effectiveness of nutrition depends to a great extent on its culinary variety, and not at all on the amount of calories or proteins in the products. The purpose of human nutrition is to maintain active life, to ensure a high tone of emotional mood, and all this is created to a large extent by the "joy of food", which is not at all due to its quantity or its special nutritional value, but due to its variety, inedibility, surprise, its taste, aroma and other concepts that cannot be quantified in percentages.

From this it is clear that the problem of composing a menu, on the one hand, is extremely individual, personally determined and must be solved by each person strictly for himself, and on the other hand, any personal menu depends on the time, era, features of national and international cuisine of the given time, on the entire culture and its level in the given historical period. That is why the correct menu, effective in its food and nutritional tasks, must correspond to both the personal taste of the person and the time (era) in which he lives. And this is not easy.

Consequently, the very use of an ordered menu for oneself is already elitist. This, of course, does not mean that only the elite uses a cultural menu. It is precisely the modern elite, deprived of general culture, who came "from rags to riches", who give numerous examples of how they "know how" to eat expensively, richly, to consume exquisite dishes, but their general menu is disorderly, chaotic, random and subject to fickle foreign fashion. In a word, the elite menu can be very uncultured. And in culinary terms, even talentless.

One of the features of the menu is that it is recorded in writing. And this is also a sign of culture and a guarantee of responsibility. The menu is a serious culinary document, it not only records a person's nutrition program for the near future, but also stores data on a person's nutrition in the past, gives a rare opportunity to compare what our ancestors ate and what we eat now, who of us is more successful in solving the eternal problems of proper nutrition.

Menus appeared in clear written form as early as the mid-17th century, at the French court of Louis XIV, but their beginnings undoubtedly existed earlier, in Italy and France, in the oral form of orders from various monarchs to their court chefs.

The accumulation of written menus, their comparison, and modification helped to develop formal rules for compiling prospective menus and, in general, principles for constructing menus.

From the very beginning, that is, back in the late 17th century, two fundamental principles were put forward that have retained their significance to this day.

The first can be called natural. It is based on the obligatory seasonal change of food products of animal and plant origin, which had to be inevitably reflected in the daily menu. Thus, vegetables, fruits, mushrooms, as well as feathered game were clearly products strictly timed to a certain season, to the time of year, sometimes exactly to a certain month, and therefore should not be served at an uncharacteristic, inappropriate time for them, especially in a fresh, natural form.

Even the meat of poultry and livestock, although it could be used throughout the year, was also largely confined to certain seasons, both for religious and partly for natural reasons.

Cattle were most often slaughtered in the fall, that is, during the period of greatest weight gain, greatest fatness, and, consequently, the best quality of meat, and therefore even this category of food was also partly seasonal.

Even fish, both freshwater and sea, were also subject to seasonal migrations due to spawning, and therefore their catching or their appearance in certain places of rivers or the sea coast were also strictly tied to a certain time.

Of course, as methods for preserving and canning (salting, drying, marinating) various food products were developed, the range of their use throughout the year expanded, overcoming the narrow seasonal framework. However, in culinary terms, it was still a different food material: salted, pickled, soaked, marinated, dried, and not fresh, steamed.

And this was very important. Because the diversity of the food menu is characterized first of all by its culinary diversity, and not just by its food variety. If today you eat a dish of fresh fish, then your consumption of fish the next day, but salted or smoked, cannot be considered a repetition of the same food material, since in culinary terms this food will be completely different - both in taste, and in nutritional value, and in the presence of different components in it, and most importantly - in its emotional impact.

When the seasonal framework became insufficient to regulate the variety of food, or lost its clear boundaries in certain periods of the year, the second principle of menu composition came into effect, which was artificially formal in nature and also pursued the consistent preservation of variety in the menu.

This diversity could (and should) be of two kinds.

Firstly, it was necessary to maintain a variety of food raw materials, that is, not to repeat the same products in different dishes of one dinner or in the menu of one day. Thus, a meat dish had to be followed by a fish or vegetable dish, a game dish - by a dough or egg dish, a mushroom dish, etc. Secondly, it was necessary to observe a purely formal variety of composition, character and even appearance or composition of individual dishes in the menu.

Thus, a heavy (flour or meat, fatty) dish had to be followed by a light one (from fish, poultry, vegetables, fruits). A light dish or sauce had to be followed by a dark sauce, a salty dish had to be followed by a bland dish or vice versa - a bland dish had to be followed by something salty or spicy, a neutral dish had to be followed by something spicy, etc. In a word, change, alternation, diversity had to be in good cuisine, in a culinarily correct menu, reign in everything, both in the essential and in the external, in the visible.

Of course, a consistent, careful combination of all the above principles of menu preparation made it possible to create an extremely varied table, as well as unique, promising menus for weeks and months ahead, and sometimes for the entire annual cycle.

Of course, all this was practiced and could be carried out only in the kitchen of the ruling classes, at the palace, monarchical table, where there were special people who monitored the preparation and implementation of such carefully verified menus.

But gradually the general principles of changing dishes, food diversity in nutrition began to penetrate into the nobility and then into the bourgeois environment in France and eventually won the understanding and sympathy of the entire French people, not excluding peasants and workers. For, in essence, the importance of food diversity is quickly realized by any person in practice, since this directly leads to an increase in his vital activity, to the preservation of his working capacity. And to whom are these qualities more important than a working person, who fears the loss of health much more than a rich man or any well-off person?

Since the end of the 18th century, French restaurants have been particularly active in developing diverse menus. Each of them (and there were hundreds of them in Paris alone!) tried to create a special, unique, signature menu, different in all respects from the menus of other, competing restaurants. This led to the fact that restaurant menus, differing from each other, in each individual restaurant stopped changing and became more or less stable, sometimes for years, because each restaurant tried to cultivate its own special, exquisite, nowhere else found repertoire of dishes.

So cooking, and especially national cooking, is not a "stomach problem" about which a supposedly "enlightened" person should not puzzle (let the cooks worry about that!), but a problem of the heart, a problem of the mind, a problem of restoring the "national soul". And this is not an exaggeration at all, but a reality.

Vegetarianism as a fashionable trend in nutrition came to Russia at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries from England, partly through Germany and the Baltics, and in general, as a typical Anglo-Saxon intelligentsia fashion, was alien to Russian culinary traditions.

However, both then and later, including up until the 90s of the 20th century, one could often come across the opinion that a tendency towards vegetarianism was almost an original feature of the Russian people.

All these beliefs were based either on ignorance of facts from the history of folk nutrition and Russian national cuisine, or on ignoring the difference between a vegetarian and Lenten diet and on replacing the concept of “Lenten cuisine” with the concept of “vegetarian cuisine”.

However, a vegetarian diet should not be confused with a Lenten diet. For the composition of vegetarian and Lenten food is not only not the same, but these concepts themselves are deeply different and historically arose in Europe in completely different eras, separated from each other by two thousand years. It is clear that the ideas underlying the creation of these two nutrition systems could not be similar, and even more so identical and equivalent, because they belonged to people of different eras with different psychology and logic.

The Lenten table was and is based on Christian dogmas about the sinfulness of man and the religious principles that follow from them, which consist in the fact that food for a significant period of the year should not include meat and fats, which, while constituting the joy of life and giving the body energy and sexual urges, are appropriate only on rare holidays or can be distributed in a limited and stingy manner on working days, that is, occupy a much smaller part of the calendar year. This approach was associated with the historical, social and class role of the Church, as well as to a significant extent with objective historical circumstances: the lack of conditions for the long-term storage of meat and animal fats in the Mediterranean countries, where Christianity arose and spread. The hot climate forced the "meat days" to be timed only to the periods of slaughtering cattle, which existed since ancient times. Thus, the Lenten table of the Orthodox, Monophysite, Coptic, Catholic and other Christian churches was determined in its food repertoire from the very beginning of their activity exclusively by the religious-natural calendar, where some obligatory religious prescriptions, although artificial, were made with constant regard to the real natural conditions of the countries of the Mediterranean and Western Asia.

While excluding meat, animal fats, milk, butter and similar perishable products from the Lenten, that is, the most frequently consumed, table, the Church at the same time allowed daily, that is, during Lent, eating those animal products that did not require storage and could appear regularly in fresh form or be obtained episodically in small batches that could be quickly sold for food needs depending on specific needs. Such products were fish, shrimp, crayfish and even locusts (acrids), as well as all edible types of plants.

The centuries-old experience of the peoples of the Mediterranean confirmed that in the climatic conditions of this region, a person could maintain an active existence by eating fish, vegetable oils, fruits, berries, including such nutritious ones as grapes, olives, figs, dates, for most of the year (approximately two thirds), and meat, dairy and egg food for a smaller part of the year. For the Mediterranean and Asia Minor geographical zone, which practically did not know winter, this was normal. Fasts began to create a problem for the population of Central and Northern Europe, with their harsher climate, approximately 500-800 years after the emergence of Christianity, when it began to spread among the Germanic and Slavic peoples.

As for vegetarianism, this system of nutrition arose in Europe completely artificially in the middle of the 19th century and was initially promoted only in England during the period of its rapid industrial and colonial development. It was based on completely different principles than those on which the Lenten table was based.

The leading idea of vegetarianism was the moral principle that it is forbidden to destroy or kill all living things, and especially to shed the blood of animals, “our smaller brothers,” and therefore it is forbidden to eat them.

This moral principle was also supported by purely medical considerations, since they had a more convincing effect on Europeans, especially educated people. Doctors of that time, that is, the second half of the 19th century, claimed that meat contains not only urea, salts and other "harmful substances", but also, most importantly, that the meat of a slaughtered animal immediately undergoes "cadaveric decay" and thus becomes "carrion", and therefore contributes to various human ailments.

Thus, based on moral and medical principles, vegetarians exclude from human nutrition all animal "slaughter" products, that is, meat of domestic animals and poultry, wild game, fish of the seas and rivers, crustaceans, mollusks, soft-bodied animals, but at the same time, very inconsistently from a medical point of view, they allow the consumption of eggs, milk, dairy products, although they are also of animal origin and consist of almost the same components as meat.

English vegetarians borrowed their ideas to a large extent from the ancient Indian Vedic religion. Many Englishmen who served for years in the colonial administration in India were greatly impressed by the "sacred cows" that roamed freely even in the streets of Hindu cities, as well as other animals - peacocks, pheasants, guinea fowls, which no one tried to slaughter, roast and eat, although there were plenty of hungry, poor, destitute people in India.

For India, with its diverse and lush tropical flora, abundant in a mass of edible and nutritious plants, vegetarian nutrition was, especially in ancient times, during the gathering period, normal, natural, and the Vedic religion and culture, which was based on the belief in the transmigration of the human soul into animals and vice versa, prevented the killing of animals for moral and religious reasons.

In damp, industrially smoky, densely populated Britain, where the traditional food since ancient times was clearly animal (meat and fish) food, and the national dishes were beefsteak or roast beef with blood and heavy puddings made with beef fat, as well as pork bacon, Yorkshire hams, etc., etc., vegetarianism was a peculiar and largely sanctimonious reaction of the bourgeois intelligentsia to the industrial revolution and colonial prosperity, and most importantly, to the subsequent deterioration of the economic situation of the masses and petty bourgeois strata of the metropolis, the rise in price of traditional meat food and the increase in mass epidemic and chronic diseases by the end of the 19th century.

Under these conditions, for a part of the bourgeois intelligentsia, mostly not connected with the successes and prosperity of industry, the preaching of vegetarianism seemed like a panacea for all the corrupting trends of the era, a guarantee of a temperate, healthy life and an appeal to the puritanical ideals of the “golden past.”

In fact, providing oneself with good, varied vegetarian food turned out to be not such a cheap pleasure at all and could practically be achieved only by using many colonial products, and therefore became available only to the bourgeoisie. In the “popular version,” vegetarianism was reduced to hypocritical attempts to “scientifically” condemn the working class to a diet of potatoes and oatmeal and to calls to “voluntarily” and “for their own benefit, for the sake of health” refuse hams, beefsteaks, trout, crayfish, game and Scottish herring that were inaccessible to them.

Meanwhile, over the years, the health benefits of a vegetarian diet have been seriously questioned. Increased and systematic consumption of eggs has proven to be especially harmful. Even the combination of egg and dairy dishes has proven to be far from as harmless to health as it was initially thought. (After all, both are products “given by nature itself”!)

Nevertheless, vegetarianism began to spread as an "English fashion" in the late 19th - early 20th century throughout Europe and did not leave Russia without its influence. Here, its propagandist was Leo Tolstoy himself, who advocated the introduction of vegetarianism into the diet of the lower classes as a supposedly healthy food inherent to the people, and proceeded from Christian-ascetic considerations, as well as from the conviction that moral improvement would eventually lead to social changes.

Vegetarian restrictions are unacceptable and burdensome. This was especially evident in the creation of simple vegetarian canteens with their three or four types of meatless soup (borscht - beetroot, shchi - cabbage, gaber-sup - oatmeal and potato soup), as well as three types of porridge: buckwheat, millet, pearl barley. Hundreds of Tolstoyan canteens of this type, created at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries for the starving population in Russia, could exist only temporarily, as first aid stations saving people from starvation. But as permanent points of normal public nutrition they could not withstand competition even with the seedy provincial taverns, with their poor, low-quality, unhygienic, but still more varied meat and fish food: cheap sausage, corned beef, herring, - and with their tea, strictly prohibited and forever banished from vegetarian cuisine as a “harmful potion” along with coffee.

Plant foods put a much greater load on the human digestive tract, and if they begin to prevail or even become absolutely dominant in nutrition, then the load on the circulatory system and cardiovascular activity increases accordingly. The fact is that the caloric content of a number of plants is extremely low, and to cover the energy needs, they need to be processed in large quantities. Thus, according to the calculations of the same Tsiolkovsky, 4 kg of bananas correspond to 1 kg of flour and only 87 g of meat. From this it is clear how many times the load on the stomach increases, and then the cardiovascular system, if we want to equivalently replenish the enormous energy needs of our body at the expense of only plant foods. Thus, a one-sided diet of healthy plants can, after a certain time, hit our health from the other side: the cardiovascular system will suffer not from cholesterol, but from the most banal wear and tear.

From this it is clear that the main danger lies in monotonous nutrition, no matter what kind of monotony this may be - "healthy" plants or "unhealthy" meat. That is why a healthy menu, a healthy food repertoire will consist of any set of dishes where the principle of diversity, both culinary and gustatory, is clearly and precisely established and maintained, that is, there is meat, fish, plant and other food in its hot, cold, salty, fermented, dried and other forms, and food flavored with spices, different in taste - and bland, and sweet, and spicy, and sour - in a word, extremely diverse in products, taste, culinary processing. Such food will be the healthiest and most useful.

It is no coincidence that Eastern vegetarianism, cultivated by the Krishnaites, attaches great importance to the diversity of taste, expanding the range of the monotonous vegetarian table with the use of spices and seasonings, as well as special seasonings. That is why Krishnaite vegetarianism, as well as the vegetarian cuisine of the Chinese-Vietnamese direction Sumy Ching Hai, have made much greater progress in their distribution in Europe and America in recent years than traditional English (European) vegetarianism. The latter, also taking into account some of the negative aspects of plant food, in its most subtly developed menus intended for wealthy people, tries in every possible way to prepare plant dishes for easy digestion in order to reduce the work of the stomach. That is why such a prominent place in European nutrition is occupied by strained vegetable soups, pureed second courses from vegetables (mashed potatoes, rutabaga, pumpkin), the use of various mousses, soufflés, sambucas in sweet dishes (instead of natural berries).

In Russia, even in the 1920s and 1930s, the patriarchal traditions of the village and the general backwardness of the country were those objective historical obstacles that did not allow under any circumstances the majority of the population to move away from the traditional hot dinner table. In the vast expanses of the thirteen provinces of Great Russia, as well as in the Urals, Siberia and Transbaikalia, these traditions of hot dinner food were supported by the indigenous Russian population, including especially consistently the Don, Astrakhan, Ural (Orenburg), Siberian and Semirechye Cossacks, who firmly held to the patriarchal way of life.

Hot food, cabbage soup and porridge, any hot bread and meat or fish for the second course were considered essential, mandatory conditions of normal life and work, deviation from which would be a catastrophe. That is why even in the most difficult moments the Russian village and the Russian city workers could not do without hot food. Its real caloric content could decrease, its actual quantity could be reduced, but its basis - bread and porridge, bread and roast - remained unchanged.

There have been many examples in Russian history when representatives of the highest nobility, cut off from the people by the very fact of their birth and upbringing, which often took place in foreign boarding schools, or because of their long stay abroad, did not know Russian cuisine at all or forgot it, since they rarely used it since childhood, and, replacing it in their everyday life with some foreign one - French, Italian, Spanish or English, eventually became completely alien to Russia in their spirit and mentality. The fact is that over the years, gradually, a supposedly purely "technical" change in the nature of nutrition nevertheless led to serious changes in the entire way of life, and hence to changes in psychology.

Without breaking with national traditions, it is also necessary to take into account everything new and truly useful and useful that can improve the quality of culinary processing of food material. This means that it is necessary to monitor new products, new dishes, always evaluating them objectively, critically and on their merits. And this is possible only under the condition that a person knows the previous development of cooking well, knows the strengths and weaknesses in the culinary craft, and therefore is able to correctly evaluate and determine whether the new that appeared in a given era is truly an update, whether it is able to improve what has already been achieved in culinary practice, in the organization of the table, in the preparation of the menu, or not.

It follows that we must study the mistakes of the past well, so as not to repeat them accidentally, involuntarily. This especially applies to menu planning.

Another example, on the contrary, is negative. Knowledge of international experience of systematic consumption of synthetic soft drinks like Coca-Cola and various brightly colored "lemonades" should alert and warn our people against thoughtless consumption of all these "waters", which are far from harmless, especially for children. These food products should not be included in the diet, they should be consciously avoided.

So we need to follow events on the international culinary front systematically, thoughtfully and critically, and not turn away from them and therefore not know, not understand what is good and what is bad and even dangerous.

Only by taking all of this into account, taken together, can one remain or – better said – maintain the proper level of information and tasks concerning modern nutrition, its organization, quality and composition.

In the 90s of the last century there was no shortage of various recommendations in the field of nutrition. Literally every year new "trends" and "schools" appear, the authors of which recommend yet another panacea, supposedly designed to "preserve" or even "strengthen" the health of people who believed them: vegetarianism, dry food, salutary fasting, fruit and milk diets, separate meals, the Shatalova method, etc., etc. It is easy to notice that all these recommendations, with all their external differences, are built on the same template: they unilaterally choose one thing - clear and understandable, simplified - and demand unquestioning fulfillment of these instructions without any deviation for a long period, say - for a year or two. This is the method of all charlatans. They are perfectly aware that the circumstances of modern life are such that no person will be able to fulfill all the petty instructions of their system without the slightest omission. This means that the failure of the system will be attributed to each “careless” performer who, having accidentally missed the diet a couple of times or not having followed it to the end of the intended period due to its indigestibility or monotony, will blame himself for the failure, and not those charlatans who fooled him with their “systems”.

And this is the first conclusion that can and should be made from familiarization with the history of cooking. This means that each nation should not deviate too much from its national cuisine, because this is the first condition of proper nutrition. The second conclusion that follows from our review of the history of the menu for two hundred years is that the composition of food, and especially the composition of the menu, changes greatly in different historical periods even in the same country. Moreover, this usually goes unnoticed by people of the same generation. However, it turns out that different generations - fathers and children - already eat differently. This is partly one of the reasons for various violations in the field of nutrition. Hence the task is to maintain continuity in the nutrition of different generations, to ensure that too sharp divergences and transitions are not allowed in this area.

The third conclusion, which also suggests itself from the review of the history of the menu and from the practice of restaurants, from the experience of each person, is that the choice of food, the composition of dishes, the development of the menu and the nutrition of each person must ultimately be individually determined. Even Russian proverbs leave no doubt about this. They know and take this fact into account.

So, quite naturally, without exaggeration, three basic, fundamental principles emerge, on the basis of which one should develop for oneself the most rational system of nutrition, the most reasonable and delicious menus: dishes of national cuisine (first of all, one’s own, but also “foreign” ones that are suitable and liked); dishes familiar and beloved, traditional for previous generations of the family; dishes personally valued and pleasant for everyone.

These are the lines that should be followed when choosing different menus for yourself at different periods of your life. The main thing is to create variety - both in terms of food and taste, culinary, which is largely associated with the difference in culinary processing. And this means that you cannot limit your diet to only raw vegetables or only boiled dishes, but you need to eat as culinarily diversely as possible, that is, eat baked, grilled, fried, and stewed dishes, varying not only the food itself, but also the methods of its processing, of course, taking into account your personal inclinations and desires. This, taken together, will be a healthy, natural basis for a truly complete diet in all respects, in which you will not have to artificially count calories, vitamins, proteins and fats, because everything will work out correctly on its own. As long as it is tasty and eaten with appetite. "Eat while your stomach is fresh!" That is, eat everything correctly while you are healthy, and do not allow improper nutrition to lead to the development of various diseases that can impose a forced diet, force you to eat according to a menu imposed by doctors, which is perhaps the most terrible thing in life.

It is not for nothing that people say: "A mill is strong with water, and a person with food." This means, of course, wholesome and tasty food.

Conclusions

It is now becoming clear that the solution to the problem of food quality and nutrition requires non-traditional approaches. Nutrition can be considered as a fundamental act of a living organism, and the management of these processes is an effective way to improve the quality of human life, its duration, prevention and treatment of diseases.

The fact is that, in essence, the concept of ideal nutrition resonated with and was in good agreement with the generally accepted views on human evolution. But recently there has been rapid progress in our knowledge of the physiology and biochemistry of nutrition and the processes of food assimilation. One of the main incentives in the development of theoretical problems of nutrition lies in the practical needs of primary importance.

It may seem that considering the idea of creating ideal food and ideal nutrition within the framework of such approaches will allow us to claim that it belongs to the realm of beautiful utopias, and in the present century and the foreseeable future this problem is unlikely to be solved. That is, ideal nutrition is a myth.

It is important to think through the choice of the type of nutrition correctly, to create an individual menu for yourself and your family. This will help not only to maintain health and efficiency, but also to prolong your active and fulfilling life. With this approach, ideal nutrition is no longer a myth, but an objective reality.

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