Diet Health

"The foods we eat affect all dimensions of health and wellness. For example, a teen with Type 2 diabetes, a disease brought on by poor diet, is first diagnosed by physical signs and symptoms such as increased urination, thirstiness, and unexplained weight loss. But research has also found that teens with Type 2 diabetes have impaired thinking and do not interact well with others in school, thereby affecting psychological and social well-being. Type 2 diabetes is just one example of a physiological disease that affects multiple dimensions of health—physical, psychological, and social.\n\nIn 1894, the first congressional funds were appropriated to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for the study of the relationship between nutrition and human health. Dr. Wilbur Olin Atwater was appointed as the Chief of Nutrition Investigations and is acclaimed as the “Father of Nutrition Science” in America. Under his guidance, the USDA released the first bulletin to the American public that contained information on the amounts of fat, carbohydrates, proteins, and food energy, or calories, in various foods. Nutritional science advanced considerably in these early years, but it took until 1980 for the USDA and the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to jointly release the first edition of Nutrition and Your Health: Dietary Guidelines for Americans.\n\nAssessments of the American diet in the 1930s led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to declare in his inaugural address on January 20, 1937, “I see one-third of our nation is ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished.” From the time of Atwater until the onset of the Great Depression, nutritional scientists had discovered many of the vitamins and minerals essential for the functioning of the human body. Their work and the acknowledgement by President FDR of the nutritional inadequacy of the American diet evoked a united response between scientists and government, leading to the enrichment of flour, the development of school lunch programs, and advancements of nutritional education in this country.\n\nIn the latter part of the twentieth century, nutritional scientists, public health organizations, and the American public increasingly recognized that eating too much of certain foods is linked to chronic diseases. We now know that diet-related conditions and diseases include hypertension, obesity, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, some cancers, and osteoporosis. These diet-related conditions and diseases are some of the biggest killers of Americans. The HHS reports that unhealthy diets and inactivity cause between 310,000 and 580,000 deaths every single year."