Nutrition
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„You
must eat more fruit!“
„You must eat more dairy products!“
“You must cut down on fatty foods!”
We
hear all these pieces of advice extremely frequently from physicians
or nutrition physicians, being moreover part of the daily
vocabulary. I must acknowledge the fact that I too have made use of
the above phrases and I still tend to do it.
My
question for those who use these phrases runs like this:
“more
fruit, diary products etc….as compared to what?”
or “to what
degree should I reduce my fat intake?”
The
answer is but one – each person (especially those with a
nutritional issue) should consult a nutrition specialist who should
estimate the daily caloric necessary and decide on (estimate) a
balanced food ration. This diet – optimized after a certain
interval and undergoing (annual, at least) changes will accompany
that person for the rest of their life. Following this, it is easy to
supplement the fruit or the diary products or to reduce the fat
intake because you know where to start from.
The
caloric necessary is estimated starting from the state of health and
the calorie expenditure; the caloric necessary varies daily. I have
noticed that a terrific number of estimations are being used with
regard to the caloric necessary – some ridiculously simple
(not to
call them hilarious), having as starting points just height, weight
and age; to optimize feeding we nevertheless need something more
–
at least a serious anamnesis, if not a general medical check-up
(compulsory from my point of view). These simple estimations can be
used (with a fair chance of mistake) by those who are good at what
they do until a proper evaluation is carried out.
As far as athletes
are concerned, the calorie necessary issue appears in a different
light:
-
senior athletes from sports performance have learnt in time to
control their diet either empirically (through experience), or
through individual study - as in the case of bodybuilders,
weight-lifters; and generally of those involved in weight-related
sports;
-
young athletes depend mostly on the assistance lots (sport
nutritionists are
unfortunately a rarity in
Romania), or on the family
support; some of
these will learn the musts in time (by themselves unfortunately) but
the sad part is that another part of them will not manage to do
this…
Conclusion: food ration is NOT
established by means of hearsay for
it requires an attentive evaluation in order to obtain an estimation
as precise as possible – as closer to the ideal as possible.
September,
26
2007 (english
version)
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