energy and harmony, naturally

 

 

Nutrition refers to the science concerned with food assimilation metabolisms that allow our body to maintain itself in good health.  Dietetics, on the other hand, is the discipline that works out rules to be followed for a balanced diet: meal composition, portion size and energy intake.  Nutrition analyses, interprets and explains, whereas dietetics prescribes : both are complementary.

 

Nutrition takes into account characteristics of a person’s general state.  But we often find in shops or on the internet ready-made thinning diets claiming to be fitted to all those who want to loose weight whatever the cause of their overweight condition might be.

 

One of the weak points of many western nutritional approaches is to sort people into a few statistical categories : obese, anorexic, bulimic, etc. , and to associate each food stuff with the same effect on everyone.  For example: sugar makes you put on weight, yogurts help digestion, oranges are good for C-vitamin, etc.    And yet nothing could be more misleading.  People react differently to the same product: sugar may well cause some people to put on weight, but others will become constipated, others will become diabetic, others will be very tired after a while or have headaches, etc.

 

The myth of calories :  a soupspoon of refined sugar brings us 100 Kcal but has no nutritive value whatsoever, whereas a bowl of brown rice, which also contains 100 Kcal, brings us enough nutrients and trace elements for four hours of sedentary activity.

 

Each person must be looked at as a unique being.  Results of nutritional analyses will be specific to life and eating habits of that particular person.  Dietetic advice and recommendations will therefore be unique for that person.

 

When we take into account a person’s specific characteristics, including their preferences, their tastes, their desires and their objectives, it is quite possible to change their eating behaviour progressively but permanently.  A successful nutritional approach will result in a person keeping his or her newly acquired habits permanently without any problem, and without ever coming back to their previous behaviour.

 

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