The Science and Economics of Nutrition, Summary

We've seen that nutrition involves bringing into the body a full set of "building blocks" such that the body can build, repair, and maintain itself.

Starvation occurs when the body does not have enough calories to maintain its "operational needs" -- not enough fuel to keep going. When the body does not have enough calories, it first burns stored fats and then starts burning proteins -- which include muscles and organs (such as the heart) and eventually causes death.

Malnutrition occurs when the body does not have enough of all of the different "building blocks" to create, repair, and maintain the various components of the body. This is particularly devastating to the young when they are initially forming the body -- it can cause long-term effects. (In adults, temporary malnutrition can be recovered from unless it lasts too long.). Illness and inability to perform daily tasks well are often the outcome of malnutrition.

In the U.S., we are fortunate that private charitable food banks and government programs make starvation almost non-existent. However, malnutrition exists to a considerable degree with a greater concentration among the poor.

There are four components of achieving good nutrition. These are knowledge of good nutritional needs, action taken based on that knowledge, time, and money. Most of the focus is on knowledge -- but many educational programs in school attempt to avoid science and rely on "rote" formulas. This lack of foundational understanding of nutrition makes the task of achieving good nutritional balance difficult in an atmosphere of mass media marketing. False, or misleading, claims are easily accepted. Sometimes it causes rote formulas to be followed such as "red meat is bad" without understanding WHY read meat CAN be "bad".

Money directly enters into nutritional decisions. Good nutrition is more expensive than poor nutritive, high calorie choices. Given a sufficient budget, however, it is possible to provide good nutritional meals but it requires time to plan, choose, and prepare good meals.

I have never encountered a "30 minute meal" that I can prepare in 30 minutes. A parent who is working two (or three) part-time minimum wage jobs does not want to allocate the time -- there is homework to work with, houses to clean, medical appointments and soccer games to juggle. Well balanced restaurant meals are expensive but fast food alternatives are widely, and energetically, marketed and sold to the public.

Frozen vegetables are more nutritious but take more time to prepare than canned. Given a choice between a $1 apple and a $1 candy bar -- which do you think most children would choose?

Many books and even television series have been produced about good nutrition. In order for it to be applied, however, the underlying principles need to be understood in order to map that information to good choices that can be applied each day.