COVID 19 — First Major Lesson — Nutrition. Raise the Bar!
I hope with the ‘Wake Up ‘call from COVID-19; the world will focus on nutrition and ‘raise the bar ‘!
Invisible Corona Virus dominated every sphere of human life on earth, significantly. No other single factor has influenced people so widely in the history of our generation. Billions stayed home for fear of getting infected with the virus. Why is it so powerful? What is the cause of this power? Death! As of today, 6th May 2020, 269,867 people have died of Coronavirus. Governments, Scientists, Doctors, Medical staff, and all the professionals involved in saving lives are working hard. No other medical or health condition received so much attention to minimize or avoid death. There are an estimated 60 million deaths occurred in 2019.
So if our goal is to avoid deaths, let’s focus on the major avoidable killers of humans.
Diet -A Major Risk Factor for Death.
A group of 130 scientists and physicians, GBD 2017 Diet Collaborators, studied the risk factors for death from 1990–2017. Their results show that poor diet accounts for 1 in 5 deaths, which amounted to 11 million deaths in 2017. This study found that unhealthful eating is responsible for more deaths worldwide than any other risk factor. Therefore poor diet is the significant avoidable risk factor for mortality and morbidity, killing millions every year.
Human Body — Extraordinary Molecular Factory
The human body is an extraordinary molecular factory. Its primary function is to produce only one product — Energy. It takes food as raw material and digests it into molecules. Then processes them as needed for its operations to produce energy. An estimated 1,000,000 molecules are working in the human body, according to the Human Metabolomics database. Any imbalance in the dynamic molecular operation will result in a disease state. That can be brought to normal primarily with food, if not with medicines. Therefore when the diet is the primary risk factor or cause of death, we should focus on it, minimizing the avoidable deaths.
The human body needs some 150 nutrients from food. Macronutrients, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats are needed in larger quantities and micronutrients, vitamins, and minerals, in smaller amounts. The 13 essential vitamins that human body needs are vitamins A, C, D, E, K, and the B vitamins: thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), pantothenic acid (B5), pyroxidine (B6), biotin (B7), folate (B9) and cobalamin (B12). The 16 essential minerals that the body needs are calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, sodium, chloride, magnesium, iron, zinc, copper, manganese, iodine, and selenium, molybdenum, chromium, and fluoride.
When a metabolic process is affected by more than one factor, the law of limiting factors states that its rate is limited by the factor that is nearest its minimum value. So the health of a person is determined by the nutrient that is available at the lowest concentration, no matter how much more the other nutrients are given. Therefore all nutrients macro and micronutrients must be made available to the body at a balanced/optimal level for maintaining good health.
Global Malnutrition
An estimated 2 billion people do not consume the food needed for healthy growth. Poor dietary habits are associated with a range of chronic diseases. Scientific research in the area of human health and nutrition highlights the urgent need for coordinated global efforts to improve the quality of the human diet.
Lack of sufficient macro and micronutrients cause malnutrition or undernutrition. Excess of macronutrients and an imbalance in micronutrients cause obesity. Further imbalance in macro and micronutrients causes diabetes and other unhealthy states of the body.
Food Diversity
Ideally, a wide range of foods can give all these nutrients for a healthy human body. But according to Rome-based Biodiversity International, at present, fewer than 200 plants worldwide are cultivated commercially, out of 6,000 that are useful as food. Further, the bad news is only 5 — rice, wheat, maize, millet, and sorghum — account for 60% of the human energy supply. Generation after generation, we are making our food choices narrower and narrower. Thus the nutrients needed are missing in the human diet. Loss of nutrients required due to lack of food diversity is resulting in chronic diseases. Diet is cultural, personal, and dependent on the financial level of the people. A major change in the diet is not an easy task to achieve. But it is the need of the hour. It’s important to start adding new food items available already in the market.
FooDB
FooDB is the world’s largest and most comprehensive resource on food constituents, chemistry, and biology. It provides information on both macronutrients and micronutrients, including many of the constituents that give foods their flavor, color, taste, texture, and aroma. There are 797 food items in the FOODB database. Using this database, you can try to increase diversity in your food for better health.
People who cannot afford to buy a wide variety of plant foods can try at their local food pantries. AmpleHarvest arranges locally grown foods. It is founded by CNN Hero and World Food Prize nominee Gary Oppenheimer. It empowers millions of gardeners to easily find a local food pantry eager for their surplus garden bounty. Currently, there are 8,666 food pantries across all 50 states. You can check the nutrition details at Nutrionfacts.org of the foods you want to add to diversify your food for better health.
Nutrition is the foundation for good health besides your genes. Strengthen your health with information, knowledge, and advice from well-established sources in exercise and specific areas of health.
