Whatever Happened to FOOD?
Ellen Coleman, RD, MA, MPH © 2004

Nutrition research generally focuses on the effect of individual nutrients or food components on health and disease. To understand mechanisms, it's necessary to use single nutrients or dietary constituents so that complex interactions don't make the interpretation of experimental results impossible. However, foods contain a large number of biologically active ingredients and athletes eat foods, not nutrients or dietary components. Trying to understand the full impact of diet on health when considering only isolated food components is comparable to missing the forest for the trees.

The influence of diet on health occurs not only from the subtle effects of numerous individual food components, but from whole foods and the associated interactions that occur among these components. Mark Messina PhD and colleagues refer to this concept as "food synergy" and recommend emphasizing dietary patterns, rather than individual foods or nutrients (see Messina and colleagues, 2001).

There are three basic principles athletes can follow to obtain a healthy diet (see ADA, 2002). Moderation refers to eating a wide selection of foods within and among the five major food groups daily. No one major food group is more or less important than any other food group. Moderation should also include appropriate portion size. Balance refers to eating relatively more servings from the larger food groups at the bottom of the Food Guide Pyramid and fewer servings from the smaller food groups at the top of the pyramid. Dietary adequacy can be obtained by including a variety of nutrient-dense foods such as grains, fruits, and vegetables.

Next: "Food vs. Supplements"