Understanding food, nutrition, wellness

We have been inundated with diet plans from low-fat to low-carbohydrate, low-calorie, low-everything, DASH, Mediterranean, Atkins, Ornish, South Beach, Weight Watchers, NutriSystem and on into the night and the chips.

Some of these diets are established for weight loss and control, some for complete nutrition, some for the management of certain systemic disorders such as diabetes or gluten intolerance. There are as many publications, books, websites and blogs dealing with our diet in general or with weight control and nutrition as there are readers.

For any seniors looking for accurate, extensive and understandable nutritional and dietary information, however, I earnestly recommend the Johns Hopkins White Papers entitled "Nutrition, and Weight Control for Longevity, 2009." Visit www.JohnsHopkinsNutrition.com if you wish to order or without your computer or Blackberry, call (800) 829-0422 - or even the younger generation's despised snail mail - P.O. Box 420235, Palm Coast, FL 32142. I believe, no matter which avenue you choose, you will be well rewarded.

This nutritional gold mine can only be outlined here but such a review may be sufficient to spark your interest and drive you to search further into this superb white paper.

First, there appears within it, a short outline on the basics of our human nutrition. These include our micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals - even fiber, which is really not a nutrient but still a very important and basic dietary component - and our macronutrients: carbohydrates, proteins and fats. Then follows a diet outline that includes the above elements in appropriate amounts for complete nutrition and weight maintenance.

Significant but uncluttered space is then given to a clear look at cholesterol and triglycerides, our fats - good and bad - and how they affect our health - good and bad - and the way these lipids are managed. This superb section also tells us how to select leaner (but good) cuts of meat and poultry and how, in detail, to prepare them to minimize their saturated fat content. Next comes an extensive survey of fiber - both soluble and insoluble - an in-depth survey that outlines its importance in our general health, in heart disease and cancer protection, diabetes care, weight control and more, all along with dietary inclusion recommendations.

Micronutrients next have their spot and here included are clear and sufficient counseling about all of our vitamin and mineral needs and minimums, as well as cautions against some dietary extremist's views of massive supplementations of such micronutrients that are of no proven value but of certain proven harm. Then follows an extensive look into antioxidants - which are important components of our regular diet and which are also widely supplemented because of their ability to arrest cellular damage caused by free radical elements released when certain foods metabolize. Such benefits, although real, are often overplayed in commercial supplements and in freak diets. Still, antioxidants are a vital component of our food and they have, in this report, been extremely well documented.

Also here recommended and explained is the regular addition of vitamin B-12 and vitamin D as well as calcium to all senior diets. Other vitamins and minerals may be added, but we should be able to answer a group of queries about that addition before jumping too far into vitaminville. Other sections talk about food enhancement, organic foods, safety food checking, alcohol pro and con, weight control and obesity problems. The information and discussions provided in these sections are clear and complete but not overwhelming or dull.

Finally, the old food pyramid makes a revised return visit as a much more valuable assistant to each of us using it - so much so that it has been renamed MyPyramid. It features the possessor scaling one pyramid side to indicate the changing dietary needs as that person increases or decreases physical activity. Running up to the top of this pyramid's face in varying-width and colors, are stripes. narrowing as they rise, and which represent each important food group. Underneath this picture is a clear detailed outline of a 2,000-calorie nutritionally fulfilling daily diet. This diet, tailored to fit the climbers' needs, sits below the pyramid. Now then, to properly personalize and tailor-make this pyramid, we must go to our - or to someone's - computer and enter www.mypyramid.gov/mypyramid/index.aspx, then enter our age, sex, weight, height and physical activity level. Viola! MyPyramid becomes our own with a personalized nutrition plan. Try it.

This present column displays very little, if anything, of the real value of the Hopkins White Paper that we are reviewing - somewhat like reciting just the names of the Holy Bible's books - their message being left behind. Our main purpose, however, is to pique interest amongst senior readers and eaters, hoping that they will be moved to get this volume themselves and profit by it. Research reveals that less than 30 percent of us are eating a fully nutritional diet. The report's cost is about equivalent to 10 gallons of regular gas at today's (March 4) prices, and I will gladly give my 2008 equally good edition of this report to any senior amongst us who needs it.

Clark Gillespie is a retired OB/GYN who now lives in Aiken.