THE NEW NUTRITION: YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

Whether you are hell-bent on living to 100 or you'd settle for a mere threescore and ten, no doubt you'd like to look well and feel well all your life. Whether nature gave you large bones or small ones, you probably want to be trim without suffering the rigors and deprivations of one "diet" after another, 90 percent of which are doomed to fail anyhow.

Your success in reaching these goals depends very much on what and how and how much you eat. Your daily diet can influence your risk of developing an imposing list of life-shortening and typically American diseases, including heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and high blood pressure, not to mention the less threatening but painful problems of tooth decay, bone fractures, and—America's leading ailment—obesity.

If indeed you are what you eat, what can you do about it? Nutrition studies have shown that for the vast majority of Americans a healthful diet depends not so much on consuming any particular nutrient or group of nutrients, but rather on the overall structure of the diet —the total balance of foods we eat. Currently, our balance is greatly distorted: Americans eat too much fat, too much sugar, too many calories, and even too much protein.

We are a people ignorant of good nutrition. And the reasons why are as close as the local supermarket, where shelves are lined with thousands of smartly packaged food products that have little nutritive value or are so highly processed that they bear small resemblance to the original farm product. More than half the foods we eat are processed and packaged. Fifty percent of these manufactured food items didn't exist a decade ago. Experts estimate that ten years from now, 80 percent of the food items sold in supermarkets will be less than a decade old. As many as 500 new products may be introduced in a given year.

How can consumers faced with this array of new and unfamiliar foods know if they're getting their nutritional money's worth? Too often, they can't. The food industry spends more than $7 billion a year advertising its wares, mostly pushing the nutritionally deficient ones— snacks, candy, and soft drinks laden with fat, sugar, and calories. Rarely are (here equally enticing ads for whole grains, fresh fruits, or vegetables.

Many people who've become disillusioned with what industry has done to foods have opted for so-called natural and organic products, and often end up paying through the nose for nutrition that is no better than what the supermarket offers. Others have abandoned the "standard American diet" for the vegetarian regimens of our evolutionary forebears, and some shortchange their bodies on essential nutrients because they don't know enough to construct a nutritionally sound vegetarian diet. Still others sprinkle fiber like holy water on everything they eat, but lack any appreciation for what the different kinds of fiber can and cannot do for the body. And tens of millions are beset with dietmania, often choosing hazardous schemes in their eternal search for a way to eat themselves to slimdom.

In general, a public ignorant of sound nutritional facts is at the mercy not only of nutritionally immoral food companies but also of a growing army of food faddists, diet mongers, vitamin hawkers, and self-styled nutritionists. As a result, many of the choices people make in an effort to improve their nutritional well-being are based on sweeping generalities, half-baked data, ignorance, prejudice, and superstition.

At a Christmas buffet in 1978,1 watched a young man pick apart an eggplant casserole to be sure it contained no meat. He said that he doesn't eat meat or chicken because "they are contaminated with dangerous chemicals." But he had no qualms about eating fish. He admitted that many fish are harvested from waters laced with chemical poisons, but he said "at least they got there naturally—someone didn't deliberately add them to the fish."

A friend never drinks coffee because she says it keeps her awake at night. But she thinks nothing of downing two or three cups of tea after dinner, which contain more caffeine than a cup of coffee.

Another friend refuses to eat the rice at Chinese restaurants because it isn't brown rice.

At a dinner party in the spring of 1979, the man next to me quietly asked the hostess for saccharin for his coffee—which he drank while cutting into a 500-calorie wedge of pecan pie. As he emptied the pink packet of no-calorie saccharin into his cup to replace the 18 calories in a teaspoon of sugar, he said to me apologetically, "I know this probably causes cancer, but ..."

I was waiting for a drink at the office fountain while the young man ahead of me swallowed no less than six pills and tablets, one after the other. Concerned, I asked him if he was all right. "Sure," he said, "these are ..." and he rattled off a laundry list of vitamins, minerals, and quasi nutrients, which he said he takes three times a day. "They're good for you," he assured me.

In the face of nutritional ignorance, myths and downright quackery have gained a strong foothold. People lambaste "chemicals" in our foods and overlook the fact that major nutrients like fat and sugar are actually doing the most damage. Millions search for the elixir of youth in bottles of vitamins and minerals, cakes of yeast, or jars of wheat germ. The current interest in micronutrients—vitamins, minerals, and trace elements—has prompted many to conclude that haphazard eating habits and unbalanced menus can be compensated for by swallowing a pill or potion of concentrated nutrients. This is not true. It's comparable to giving a Lincoln Continental an occasional shot of premium gasoline to make up for the low-octane fuel you fill it with most of the time. Your body is a machine; it will run as well as its fuel allows.

This book is designed to steer you between the profit-motivated food companies and faddism. It is meant to help you understand the why and wherefore of good nutrition and to put them into practice if you decide to. It is necessarily based on less-than-complete information. Nutrition research has long sucked the hind teat of the nation's multibillion-dollar biomedical research cow, and even now is not receiving the research support it deserves. But if you put together all that we do know, you'll have plenty of guidance to make sensible and healthful adjustments in your diet.

It's important to realize that good nutrition is not necessarily incompatible with pleasurable dining. Food has long been—and should continue to be—a great source of enjoyment for people. You needn't give up everything you now love to eat in order to protect your health. But you do have to learn to practice discretion and moderation in your food choices. A Harris poll taken in 1978-1979 revealed that two in three Americans think they'd be healthier if they changed their diets, but they continue to eat the way they always have because they enjoy it and lack the will power to change.

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