Caring for a healthy diet takes on new features. If ten years ago everyone was crazy about diets and the course of fitness, now you will not surprise anyone with the presence of a nutritionist in the offices of large companies. Now the state has also joined the struggle for proper nutrition of Russians – the development of laws on the necessary culinary education is in full swing. “Ogonyok” decided to investigate the process.
BATTLE OF CUCUMBERS
“A cheerful kind cucumber was walking through the forest. Suddenly out to meet him, nasty, feisty, zharenaya- Refried oil potato … “So begins the grocery comics for children of primary school age, who has now appeared in the kindergartens of the city of Izhevsk. And the kids really like to watch the universal battle of Good (they are personified by Cucumber, Tomato and Cabbage) against the Forces of Evil – chips, chupa-chups and other dubious fast food . The gastronomic battle ends with a convincing defeat of all these products of the pernicious influence of the West, and at the same time, children learn the basics of the micronutrient theory of modern dietetics.
“There are vitamins in a tomato , which take such big pirate guns and beat microbes,” says four-year-old kindergartener Vadim Kolosov. – And the cucumber with cabbage – they are the best …
The complex program “Areal of Health”, developed by the Commission for the formation of a healthy lifestyle of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, is designed specifically for children’s consciousness.
“It is much more expensive to change the spoiled taste preferences of adult citizens than to properly educate the younger generation,” says one of the developers of this program, Galina Snigur . – Therefore, the main part of the draft law being prepared will be devoted specifically to the education of children.
The program is still of a voluntary-compulsory nature – in the sense that its proposals will be introduced without fail in only a few regions of Russia: in the Moscow region, the Republic of Sakha – Yakutia, Udmurtia, Voronezh, Irkutsk, Uglich and Murom. Other regions can join at will. If the experiment turns out to be successful, then, according to the Public Chamber, the “Areal of Health” program will become the basis of the corresponding law and a new national project. And that such a law is necessary for Russia, all nutritionists and deputies are convinced – it is enough just to read the reports of Rospotrebnadzor and Goskomstat. Judging by them, the Russians are eating very badly.
BREAD YES CHIPS – OUR FOOD
Queues at grocery supermarkets in large cities every time suggest that Russians are preparing for a blockade. Or at least for a long hike. It is interesting, however, that with the variety available now on store shelves, a full set of substances necessary for the normal functioning of the body, today more than 70 percent of the population receive less. Moreover, according to the State Unitary Enterprise Research Institute of Nutrition of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, if the poor strata of citizens receive less protein in their diet, then the representatives of the middle class – vitamins and various microelements.
– The nutrition of Russians of all levels of prosperity is characterized by an excess of saturated fats, a high content of simple sugars and a catastrophic shortage of vitamins and minerals, primarily selenium, iodine and copper, that is, those that are not produced in the body, but are used in metabolism, says Mikhail Ginzburg, Director of the Research Institute of Dietetics and Dietetics. – Therefore, almost 50 percent of the population of Russia, who are considered to be practically healthy, actually have reduced immunity, and any stress causes the body to malfunction. If anyone doubts the direct connection between the food consumed and the health of the nation, let him remember the beginning of perestroika, when citizens more often saw food on TV than in stores. Then, as experts say, the nutritional and energy value of food was close to the minimum consumption rate, which also affected the health of an entire generation.
“Children born in the early 90s are by far the sickest generation,” says Zhanetta Gorelova, MD, from the Scientific Center of Children’s Health, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. – According to various estimates, more than half of children have problems with immunity and reproductive health.
Moreover, the lack of a healthy diet was aggravated by the flood of low-quality products – cookies with surrogate cream, “chocolate” bars, chips, hamburgers … In short, everything that is called in the West by the word snack , which in translation means both a snack and a dirty, obscene curse … If we add to this the Russian addiction to bread, pasta, butter, “big-eyed” sausage with fat and white rolls poured over condensed milk, which has been ineradicable since Soviet times, then the diet will turn out to be completely deadly.
KILLER DRAGONS
To understand why chips and salty croutons should be associated in the minds of the younger generation with insidious demons and the fiends of hell, it is enough to turn to medical statistics.
“Specialists at Oxford University have investigated the nature of the sharp rise in blood cancer cases in children,” says Galina Snigur . – The results of the work turned out to be quite shocking: the vast majority of sick children ate more than 12 hamburgers, hot dogs or other “fast food” per month.
However, there is also Russian data on this score. For example, specialists from the Tyumen Regional Oncological Dispensary, headed by Honored Doctor of the Russian Federation Boris Babinov, conducted a statistical sample and found that the most common cause of cancer (35 percent) is malnutrition. This is followed by smoking – 30 percent, infectious factors and hereditary predisposition – 10 percent each.
The main reason for the killing effect of fast food products is preservatives,
dyes, flavor enhancers that accumulate in the body. For example, transgenic fats, which are found in most chips and any other fried snack, are not found in natural foods at all. But, getting into the human body, they are not processed, but “attached” to the walls of blood vessels, forming atherosclerotic plaques, and as a result, strokes occur.
“Over the past fifty to one hundred years, both food products and the environment itself have changed dramatically, but the human body, which evolutionarily“ matured ”for tens of thousands of years, cannot adapt to such innovations,” says Boris Babinov . – Think, after all, until the century before last, products were not cleaned at all and came to a person’s table almost in their natural form. Today, unprocessed foods practically do not exist in the city. Therefore, a modern person needs to reduce the stress of modern modified foods as much as possible, giving preference to a reasonable balanced diet.
So, doctors recommend that men consume food with a total calorie content of 2,400 calories per day, and women – 2,100. At the same time, there should be more fish in the diet than meat, the presence of which is also necessary. In addition, it is imperative to eat at least two different fruits per day, grain bread is gray in “pimples”. Potatoes and pasta – once or twice a week. Plus, add a vitamin complex to this.
However, as the nutritionists themselves say, the simplicity of the recommendations makes them practically impracticable for a Russian person accustomed to complex diets and a hard struggle with his own nature.
RUNNING FROM INFARCTION TO STROKE
Failure to power supply looks all the more offensive because outwardly everything seems not so depressing. Fitness centers are filled with busily squatting middle managers, and every second young lady is permanently on a Jennifer Lopez diet .
“People have really become more interested in a healthy lifestyle, but they only direct their efforts, as a rule, in the direction completely opposite to health,” says nutritionist Mikhail Ginzburg. – Imagine that in most cases a person does not get the proper amount of micronutrients, and he still sits on some kind of mono – diet . For example, now the “buckwheat diet” is very popular among our patients, when porridge replaces literally everything. Of course, eating buckwheat for two weeks will reduce your weight, but you will have to pay for this by disrupting the processes of hematopoiesis.
Fitness in itself apart from a balanced diet is more than harmful. Indeed, most often, modern athletes practice one workout per week, but they try to give their all in the gym to complete exhaustion. However, in this case, going to the fitness center becomes a real stress for the body.
However, poor nutrition is not only a Russian problem. In all civilized countries, people cannot and do not want to be able to eat normally. And nowhere in the world has there yet appeared a generation of smart children who consciously prefer cabbage and radishes. This is all true. But in a number of countries around the world, governments have already learned to deceive their citizens who are prone to gluttony.
So, the first to think about the need for gastronomic reform back in 1984 in Japan. The overweight descendants of the samurai developed the world’s first concept of functional nutrition. According to this concept, the Japanese have begun to invest heavily in the development of nutritional supplements that improve health, prevent overweight and thus reduce the economic loss of the health care budget. Today, similar programs have been adopted in most European countries. For example, advertising of food for babies is already banned in Sweden. In Germany, a law has been passed according to which products such as chips must bear a strict warning: “Not for daily consumption!”
And look at Russian advertising, nutritionists lament, it openly promotes gluttony! And it brings up a stereotype: eat as much as you like, and some mezim will save you from all problems …
But whether government intervention will solve all gastronomic problems is a very controversial issue. For example, four-year-old Vadim Kolosov, despite all the propaganda of wellness comics, likes Chupa Chups most of all :
“But you can’t eat it,” the child sighs. – Because the teeth will fall out, the stomach will ache and then old age will come.
DIET SESSION WITH FOLLOW-UP
At the request of “Ogonyok” Director of the Research Institute of Dietetics and Diet Therapy Mikhail Ginzburg reveals the pros and cons of the most popular dietary nutrition complexes today
1. Kremlin (protein) diet
What is the point: this “path to perfection” involves an almost complete rejection of carbohydrates and unlimited protein intake. In the minds of the Kremlin officials , the worst enemy is sugar, as well as any sweets, flour products, potatoes, bread, and rice. At first, it is also recommended to refrain from vegetables, fruits and juices.
Pros: Eating meat, fish, and cheese is encouraged. You can also have some alcohol.
Cons: a sharp impoverishment of the diet leads to a general weakening of the body and depression. In addition, the brain primarily takes energy from carbohydrates. Intense eating of meat leads to excess uric acid and, as a result, to the occurrence of gout.
2. Diet by blood type
What is the point: the menu depends on which blood type a person has.
It is believed that the first group – the oldest on Earth – appeared among hunters and nomads, who had a good digestive system and good health, so they should eat meat. The second blood group arose during the transition to a sedentary and agrarian lifestyle, therefore people of this type prefer cereals at the genetic level.
Pros: People with blood type I really love meat.
Cons: You could just as well have made a diet based on hair color or any other genetic trait. It is absurd to establish a clear relationship between the owners of the first blood group and the ancient hunters. How, then, can explain that the parents had the second and third blood groups?
3. Diet by hemocode
What is the point: drawing up an individual test for food intolerances. A blood test is used to assess the response of neurophils to various types of foods. The creators of the programs assure that in this way it is possible to exclude “contraindicated” products and not to poison the body.
Pros: such methods work primarily because a person somehow restricts the consumption of “harmful” products.
Cons: a lot of money spent on analyzes, which, by and large, do not affect anything.
4. Separate food
What is the point: A product compatibility table has been compiled, which shows the ideal, compatible and unacceptable combinations. For example, meat and bread are contraindicated. Supporters of separate nutrition argue: when low-calorie, but incompatible foods enter the stomach at the same time, their digestion becomes difficult, non-oxidized fats and carbohydrates are deposited as fat.
Pros: the person one way or another begins to eat less.
Cons: The diet has no scientific basis. It is almost impossible to divide foods into proteins and carbohydrates. The carbohydrate product itself – bread contains almost 9 grams of protein (per 100 g). I wonder how you can separate them? In addition, this diet is unnatural in nature, because a mixed diet is inherent in humans.
5. Diet “do not eat after six”
What is the point: a complete rejection of any food in the evenings is assumed.
Pros: in line with the ancient wisdom that dinner should be given to the enemy.
Cons: very traumatic and difficult to tolerate diet, as humans are a mammal with an evening diet, which requires a compulsory meal between 18:00 and 21:00. At this time, the body replenishes its energy supply, and the person has a feeling of hunger. If you really want to go hungry, then it is better to refuse food in the morning.