Nutrition and a healthy diet has been stressed by many medical professionals as the key to avoiding many diseases, but its teachings are left out of many grade school curriculums.
“We know that eating healthy can reduce risk of the most common, deadly medical problems including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis and several types of cancer –many related to obesity,” said Jennifer Nelson, M.S., R.D. and Katherine Zeratsky, R.D. of the Mayo Clinic.
With information as revitalizing as this, one might assume that if some people are taught this at an earlier age they might have the knowledge to help themselves avoid such diseases.
The question “What can be done to improve America’s health” was answered last month in the Mayo Clinic’s nutrition-wise blog by Nelson and Zeratsky:
“Eating healthy requires more than providing people with information-—it needs to be supported by an infrastructure that makes healthy foods available, affordable and safe,” said Nelson and Zeratsky.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius announced the release of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans in January 2011, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
With the release of these new guidelines, the USDA has hopes that Americans will incorporate them into their everyday lives, which only then would aid in the improvement of the overall health of the American people, said secretary Vilsack.
Yet both KidsHealth.com and MayoClinic.com agree that avoiding much turmoil over becoming overweight and acquiring some diseases can be attributed to a person’s foundation of knowledge as children.
“The best way for you to encourage healthy eating is to eat well yourself,” said KidsHealth.
“Kids follow the lead of the adults they see every day.”
Enforcing healthy nutrition should involve the federal government, state and local governments, schools, businesses and employers, health care systems, insurers and health care providers, and most importantly communities and individuals, according to Nelson and Zeratsky.
Perhaps then we will be fully encompassed by a world of healthier foods that will make it simple to take the better choices we are offered.
