What is diet?

By Definition: Diet is a food consumed by an organism or group. In simple language diet is something what a person eats or drinks during the course of a day.
Dietary habits and choices play a significant role in health and mortality, and can also define cultures. A poor diet can have an injurious impact on health, causing deficiency diseases such as scurvy, beriberi, and kwashiorkor; health-threatening conditions like obesity and metabolic syndrome, and such common chronic systemic diseases as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis.

What is America eating?

• Agriculture revolution : With traditional methods of soil enrichment , plants obtain the minerals and other substances required to make natural chemical compounds in their leaves, stems and roots that discourage insects eating them. Until 1940s farmers returned essential nutrients to the soil by mulching, manuring and crop rotation.  These methods were used successfully to maintain the soil quality since agriculture began.  The human greed and to make bigger profits agriculture revolution began by additing fertilizers , pesticides and additives to the soil. In the 1940s manufacturers began to produce large amounts of synthetic pesticides and their use became widespread. Some sources think 1940s and 1950s was the beginning of the “pesticide era”.

• Environment : Pesticides and additives

• Organophosphate pesticides have increased in use, because they are less damaging to the environment and they are less persistent than organochlorine pesticides. These are associated with acute health problems for workers that handle the chemicals, such as abdominal pain, dizziness, headaches, nausea, vomiting, as well as skin and eye problems. Additionally, many studies have indicated that pesticide exposure is associated with long-term health problems such as respiratory problems, memory disorders, dermatologic conditions,cancer, depression, neurological deficits,miscarriages, and birth defects. Summaries of peer-reviewed research have examined the link between pesticide exposure and neurologic outcomes and cancer, perhaps the two most significant things resulting in organophosphate-exposed workers.

• A study published by the United States National Research Council in 1993 determined that for infants and children, the major source of exposure to pesticides is through diet.A study in 2006 measured the levels of organophosphorus pesticide exposure in 23 school children before and after replacing their diet with organic food (food grown without synthetic pesticides). In this study it was found that levels of organophosphorus pesticide exposure dropped dramatically and immediately when the children switched to an organic diet.

• Empty Foods: Food processing

Freezing, Drying, Cooking, and Reheating

Nearly every food preparation process reduces the amount of nutrients in food. In particular, processes that expose foods to high levels of heat, light, and/or oxygen cause the greatest nutrient loss. Nutrients can also be "washed out" of foods by fluids that are introduced during a cooking process. For example, boiling a potato can cause much of the potato's B and C vitamins to migrate to the boiling water. You'll still benefit from those nutrients if you consume the liquid (i.e. if the potato and water are being turned into potato soup), but not if you throw away the liquid. Similar losses also occur when you broil, roast, or fry in oil, and then drain off the drippings.

The table below compares the typical maximum nutrient losses for common food processing methods. This table is included as a general guide only. Actual losses will depend on many different factors, including type of food and cooking time and temperature. For additional data on specific preparation methods, please see the USDA Table of Nutrient Retention Factors (2003).

Diet & Nutrition : What is Nutrition

Nutrition is a process of the body using (Diet)food to sustain life.

The council on Food and Nutrition of the American Medical Association defines nutrition as “The science of foods, the nutrients and the substances therein, their action, interaction and balance in relation to health and diseases. Nutrition science is the area of knowledge regarding the role of food in the maintenance of good health. Thus nutrition is the study of food at work in our body.

Health is defined by the World Health Organization of the United Nations as the “ State of complete physical, mental and social well- being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity (or ill- health/illness)”

According to Dr Carl Pfeiffer an American doctor and pyschiatrist "with an adequate intake of micronutrients - essential substances we need to nourish us - most chronic diseases would not exist. Good nutritional therapy is the medicine of the future"

Nutrition focuses on the role of nutrients,

There are seven major classes of nutrients:

Macronutrients: carbohydrates, fats, fiber, proteins, and water.

Micronutrients : minerals and vitamins

Basically, nutrition consists of diet (what you take in) and metabolism (what happens to it after it enters your body). Proper nutrition requires the proper ingestion and equally important, the absorption of vitamins, minerals, and food energy in the form of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.

• Nutrition and Dental Problems
  
  In the early part of the 20Th century Dr Weston Price, who was dentist, became interested in the relationship between human nutrition and tooth decay. Dr Price also made some other observations besides tooth decayed, there were deformities in the facial bones which left those affected with malformed dental arches and crowding of the teeth. Moreover, this deformities were correlated with lower IQ’s with personality disturbances and with a dramatically higher incidence of degenerative diseases such as tuberculious.
  
  In 1939, he published "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration", a book that details a series of ethnographic nutritional studies performed by Price across diverse cultures.
  
  Some of the cultures studied include the inhabitants of the Lotschental in Switzerland, the inhabitants of the Isles of Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, the Gaeltacht areas on the western islands of Ireland, the Eskimos of Alaska and Canada, the Native Americans, among the inhabitants of New Caledonia, Fiji, Samoa, the Marquesas Islands, Tahiti, Rarotonga, Nukuʻalofa, Hawaii, the Masai, Kikuyu, Wakamba and Jalou tribes of Kenya, the Muhima of Uganda, the Baitu and Watusi of Rwanda, the Pygmies, and Wanande in the Congo, the Terrakeka, Dinka and Neurs of Sudan, the Aborigines of Australia, the inhabitants of the Torres Strait, the Māori of New Zealand, the Tauhuanocans, Quechua, "Andes Indians", "Sierra Indians" and "Jungle Indians" of Peru.
  
  In his studies he claimed to have found that plagues of modern civilization (headaches, general muscle fatigue, dental caries or cavities, impacted molars, tooth crowding, allergies, heart disease, asthma, and degenerative diseases such as tuberculosis and cancer) were not present in those cultures sustained by indigenous diets. However, within a single generation these same cultures experienced all the above listed ailments with the inclusion of Western foods in their diet: refined sugars, refined flours, canned goods, etc.

How diet can help Autism Issues:

• Gastrointestinal issues
• Immunological issues
• Neurological Issues

Autism and Diet theory

• Opiate theory
• Amines
• Lectins
• Phenols/Salicylates
• Glutamates
• Milk: Alternative theory

So Diet Does Matter a Lot

You are what you EAT!!!