I’ve been getting into nutrition over the past few years on a slow basis. I can be slow sometimes, especially when it comes to food. I like the idea of eating healthy foods, but any changes need to be slow otherwise I won’t stick to it.
I’ve been learning about nutrient-dense foods, especially when reviewing the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, put out every five years by the US Department of Agriculture. I’ll go with their definition of nutrient-dense foods: “Nutrient-dense foods and beverages provide vitamins, minerals, and other health-promoting components and have little added sugars, saturated fat, and sodium. Vegetables, fruits, whole grains, seafood, eggs, beans, peas, and lentils, unsalted nuts and seeds, fat-free and low-fat dairy products, and lean meat and poultry–when prepared with no or little added sugars, saturated fat and sodium–are nutrient-dense foods.”
Here’s a sobering statistic: 74% of Americans are overweight or obese. I don’t want to be one of them, and I don’t want you to be one of them! This post is not about how to lose weight or prevent weight gain, at least not directly. Here is a link for preventing weight gain, and here is another one for losing weight if you are interested in that.
One thing I didn’t know is that 60% of adults today have at least one diet-related chronic disease, including cardiovascular disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, cancers (breast in women and colorectal in men), and reduced bone mass and muscle strength.
What’s the long and short of the recommendations for meals?
- Make half your plate fruits and vegetables
- Focus on whole fruits
- Vary your veggies
- Make half your grains whole grains
- Vary your protein routine
- Move to low-fat or fat-free dairy milk or yogurt (or lactose-free dairy or fortified soy versions)
- Choose foods and beverages with less added sugars, saturated fat and sodium
The three most important dietary principles from the report are singled out, and they are nothing new: meet your nutritional needs primarily from foods and beverages, choose a variety of options from each food group, and pay attention to portion size. Why are these the main recommendations? Because most Americans don’t do it! From age five to 59 we don’t do well as a nation.
How bad is it? Here is the data:
For total vegetables, only 10% of the population are eating sufficient vegetables, with red and orange vegetables the worst of all.
For fruits, only about 20% of the population are getting enough.
For grains there are wildly divergent results. For whole grains, the percentage of the population is even lower than for red and orange vegetables, only 2% of us are meeting it. Refined grains include white breads, refined-grain cereals and crackers, corn, cream of wheat, pasta, white rice, etc. For refined grains Americans are way, way above the recommended amount–it’s sky high (Pro tip: refined grain choices should be enriched). Recommended daily intake of whole grains is to be at least half of total grain consumption.
For dairy, it may be surprising but only 10% of Americans are getting the recommended amount.
Protein foods are broken down into categories of meat/poultry/eggs, seafood, and nuts/seeds/soy products. For meats Americans are doing well overall, consuming a bit more meat than is recommended. Seafood is the opposite: only about 10% of Americans are consuming enough seafood (why not, it’s so good!). Nuts is the closest to balanced of everyone that was studied, so we are doing perhaps the best overall in this category.
Dietary fiber is a big nutrition deficit in the United States. I am not making this up, less than 10% of women and 3% of men meet recommended intakes for dietary fiber. This means you and I are probably part of that group! For men between aged 19+, 28 – 34 grams per day is what we need; for women it’s 22 – 28.
Calcium and vitamin D are two nutrients that most adults are not getting enough of. About 60% of women aren’t getting enough calcium (30% for men), and over 90% of men and women don’t consume enough vitamin D! Want to up your intake? Dairy foods and seafood. I’m not a big supplement guy, but I do take 5000 IUs of vitamin d3 and I also take calcium every day. You may not know that vitamin D promotes the absorption of calcium, so it’s great to get both together.
Now for the “no-no” categories. A quick review will reveal that time and again, sugars, saturated fat and sodium (salt) are the big three in terms of health risk from foods. Let’s take a look
Sugars are not inherently evil, however many of us simply consume too much food with added sugars per day. The biggest source of added sugars? “Sugar-sweetened beverages”, which includes soft drinks, fruit drinks and sport/energy drinks. The number two source is desserts and snacks. The recommendation is to limit intake of added sugars to less than 10 percent of calories per day. For adult Americans, about 60% of men and 64.5% of women are exceeding their limit. Drink water!
Saturated fats are certainly okay in low to moderate amounts. There are quite a few sources of saturated fats, but what are the biggest culprits? Sandwiches, which includes burgers, tacos and burritos. The number two source is again desserts and snacks. Trans fats are the worst of the worst: The National Academies recommends that trans fat and dietary cholesterol consumption be “as low as possible without compromising the nutritional adequacy of the diet.” The recommendation is that intake of saturated fat should be limited to less than 10 percent of calories per day by replacing them with unsaturated fats, particularly polyunsaturated fats. For adult Americans, 76% of men and 71% of women are over their limit.
Sodium/Salt is actually an essential nutrient, so we do need it. A lot of foods have sodium in them, so there are multiple sources that can increase your sodium intake. Number one is again sandwiches, followed by rice/pasta/grain-based dishes, vegetables, pizza, meat/poultry, chips, etc. The recommended amount for adults is 2300 mg/day, for teens 1800 mg/day, and 1500 mg/day for kids. How bad are Americans about their sodium intake? For adults, 97% of men and 83% of women are over the limit!
Alcohol is different than the other categories in that we don’t need any alcohol to be healthy. In terms of serving sizes, let’s review that a 12-oz drink of beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of hard alcohol (80+ proof) are all equivalent. The recommended amount is not to drink at all, but if so to drink in moderation. This means 2 drinks or less per day for men, 1 drink or less per day for women. Remember that alcohol in any amount has been shown to increase risk to several types of cancer. About 66 percent of adults ages 21 through 59 report alcoholic beverage consumption in the past month, and of those, approximately half report binge drinking, sometimes multiple times per month.
The big takeaways for me are to eat more fruits, vegetables, whole grains and dairy, and to cut down on sugar, salt, saturated fats. It might not feel like anything new, but did you know things are as bad as we’ve learned? You may consider making just one change, and see what happens.
Nutrition is only half the solution when it comes to improved health, however. The other half is what I write about in my next article.