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| Your Choice of Food |
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| Processed Food |
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| Organic Food |
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| GM Food |
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| Functional Foods |
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Your Choice of Food |
Once, food was just food but the word is now just as likely to be preceded by a qualifier: Processed Food, Organic Food, GM Food, Functional Food. Each has its points and most of them can be precisely defined but understanding all the claims and counter-claims for different kinds of food can be confusing. If we take them one by one, the picture clears somewhat. Far more is now known about the science of nutrition than ever before and the overriding message is that a very broad diet, taking in vital categories of essential nutrients, is better than a narrowly focussed diet, even if that diet sets out to avoid dangerous foodstuffs such as saturated fats. A survey has shown that the Japanese tend to eat a greater variety of different foods every day than Westerners (27 different foods a day whereas the recommended minimum in the West is 30 different foods per week); they are less prone to the 'diseases of civilization' - diabetes, heat disease and cancer - than Europeans, and their varied diet is thought to contribute to this. Dietary recommendations are often couched in terms of weights of essential nutrients per day but a simple rule of thumb is far more practical, for example: everyone should eat five different portions of fruit and veg a day. There is a tendency for diets to become unbalanced - at any one time there is often a focus on one particular food as being especially harmful in excess, or especially beneficial. Couple this with the human animal's natural tendency for binges and crazes and the risk is obvious. Balance is the key - chips, crisps and sweets are OK in moderation, so long as the rest of the diet contain sufficient nutrients in the form of vegetables, fruit, fish and any of the other vital foodstuffs. |