The theory of adequate nutrition

The classical theory of balanced nutrition resulted in several extremely serious errors. One of them is the idea and attempts to create ballast-free food. The balanced approach and the idea of refined (ballast-free) food that follows from it, apparently caused significant harm. Thus, a decrease in the proportion of vegetables and fruits in the diet, the use of refined cereals, refined products, etc. contributed to the development of many diseases, including those of the cardiovascular system, gastrointestinal tract, liver and bile ducts, metabolic disorders, the occurrence of obesity, etc. A number of erroneous conclusions were also made about ways to optimize nutrition. Another error is the idea of using elemental nutrition as a physiologically complete replacement for traditional food. In the same way, direct intravascular nutrition will never be able to provide the full range of biological effects that occur with natural nutrition. A completely different issue is the use of monomers as food additives, and elemental diets - temporarily according to medical recommendations in extreme circumstances.

In order to understand the differences between the two theories and the reasons why the classical theory is becoming an important element of a more general theory of adequate nutrition, it is necessary to characterize the main provisions, theoretical consequences and practical recommendations of the new theory and compare them with the classical one. The conclusions devoted to the theory of adequate nutrition were published in the periodical press (Ugolev, 1986, 1987b, 1988) and in monographs published in 1985 and 1987.

The main postulates of the theory of adequate nutrition

1. Nutrition maintains the molecular composition and compensates for the body's energy and plastic expenditure on basic metabolism, external work and growth (this postulate is the only one common to theories of balanced and adequate nutrition).
2. Normal nutrition is determined not by a single flow of nutrients from the gastrointestinal tract into the internal environment of the body, but by several flows of nutritional and regulatory substances that are vitally important.
3. Not only nutrients, but also dietary fibres are essential components of food.
4. In metabolic and especially trophic terms, the assimilating organism is a supra-organismic system.
5. There is an endoecology of the host organism, formed by the intestinal microflora, with which the host organism maintains complex symbiotic relationships, as well as the intestinal, or enteral, environment.
6. The balance of nutrients in the body is achieved as a result of the release of nutrients from food structures during the enzymatic breakdown of its macromolecules due to cavity and membrane digestion, and in some cases - intracellular (primary nutrients), as well as due to the synthesis of new substances, including essential ones, by the bacterial flora of the intestine (secondary nutrients). The relative role of primary and secondary nutrients varies widely.

Let us characterize some of these postulates in a little more detail.

As you can see, the basic postulates of the theory of adequate nutrition are fundamentally different from the theory of balanced nutrition. However, one of them is common. It is that nutrition maintains the molecular composition of the body and provides its energy and plastic needs.

Furthermore, man and higher animals in metabolic and trophic relations are not organisms, but, in essence, supraorganismal systems. The latter include, in addition to the macroorganism, the microflora of its gastrointestinal tract - microecology and enteral environment, which constitute the internal ecology of the organism, or endoecology. Positive symbiotic relationships are maintained between the host organism and its microecology.

The theory of adequate nutrition, in contrast to the theory of balanced nutrition, not only links normal nutrition and assimilation of food with one flow of various nutrients released as a result of digestion of food in the gastrointestinal tract into the internal environment of the body, but also accepts the existence of at least three more main vital flows. The first is the flow of regulatory substances (hormones and hormone-like compounds) produced by the endocrine cells of the gastrointestinal tract and formed in its contents. The second flow consists of bacterial metabolites. It includes ballast substances of food and nutrients modified under the influence of the bacterial flora of the intestine, as well as products of its vital activity. With this flow, secondary nutrients enter the internal environment of the body. It also includes toxic substances, which include food toxins, as well as toxic metabolites formed in the gastrointestinal tract due to the activity of bacterial flora. Apparently, this flow is physiological in the norm. The third flow consists of substances coming from contaminated food or a contaminated environment, including xenobiotics. Finally, according to the theory of adequate nutrition, the so-called ballast substances, including primarily dietary fiber, are an evolutionarily important component of food.

All the postulates of the theory of adequate nutrition are interconnected and form a set of new and unconventional ideas, approaches, research methods and techniques.

Sometimes the theory of adequate nutrition is criticized for being too "digestive". This is not true - it is biological and technological, that is, it attaches great importance to the evolutionary features and the features of the functioning of the mechanisms that ensure the assimilation of food. This approach allows us to consider a number of problems that were not sufficiently assessed by the classical theory, but are of decisive importance from the point of view of trophology.