Indeed, what is the branch of pathology or prevention of diseases that can now ignore the interest of providing satisfactory micro nutrients? In a medicine which becomes more and more metabolic and explanatory, their importance is revealed a little more each day. Accordingly, the concepts of micronutritionnels additional needs caused by this or that situation physiological or pathological or any specific type of eating behavior or lifestyle, should now be part of basic knowledge of all physicians.
Talking about physionutrition requires first and foremost to provide a comprehensive definition for this word.
The physionutrition is a new approach to care that encompasses the clinical study, physiological and biological, and the care of imbalances and deficiencies in macro-and micronutrients, their synergies and their antagonisms.
More specifically, it studied the role of essential fatty acids, vitamins, trace elements, amino acids, probiotics and neurotransmitters as well as biochemical and clinical phenomena associated with oxidative stress, physical exercise, balance of the intestinal flora, immunology…
It also incorporates more recent sciences such as nutrigénétique or anti-aging hormone.
The daily diet should provide each individual a sufficient quantity of macronutrients (protein, fat, carbohydrates) and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals and trace elements) to cover all its needs.
In 1986, the study “Evaluation de l’Apport Alimentaire Vitaminique en Bourgogne (Evaluation of the Contribution Food Vitaminique in Burgundy)”, in 1991 the investigation Val-de-Marne, and more recently in 2003, the study SU.VI.MAX have shown that a large part of the French population did not receive the ANC in vitamins, minerals and trace elements.
A study published in the notebooks of nutrition and dietetics in 1999 by Darmon and Briend demonstrates that it is difficult if not impossible, to ask the french comply with the nutritional advice without departing significantly from their eating habits.
The food in industrialized countries has several apparent paradoxes, it seems:
• healthier (accidents related to food poisoning are more rare, conservation methods are improved),
• better (diseases such as scurvy or beriberi have disappeared)
• less fat (the average calorie intake has decreased significantly in a century) and yet obesity and overweight are constantly advancing and a large portion of the population presents micronutritionnels deficits, as evidenced by several studies already mentioned. These contradictions are than superficial and deserve some explanation.
The average caloric intake decreases:
Between 1960 and 1994 the USA saw the average daily calorie intake increase from 1854 to 1785 kcal (with a percentage of fat in the diet from 41 to 37%) while the prevalence of obesity increased by 97% for men and 65% among women.
In France a decrease of 15% of calorie intake was recorded between 1965 and 1981. The same development can be seen everywhere in Europe.
This reduction in calorie intake due to a decrease in energy expenditure due to a change in lifestyle: reduction of working time, mechanization of many manual activities, more use of car, widespread use of elevators, heating increases, development electrical equipment, improving clothing, free time spent watching television…
The decrease in calorie intake partly explains the deficits recorded micronutritionnels.
Indeed, it is easy to understand that if we find easily our ration of vitamin C in absorbing 3500 calories per day, it is more difficult to absorb 1800 calories. Even if the concentration of our caloric intake was constant in micronutrients, halving the arithmetically caloric intake leads to a halving of the capital micronutritionnel.
Two factors explain the decline in micronutrients in our food:
• reducing calorie intake, which has been at the expense of foods rich in micronutrients,
• reducing the density of micronutrients in food.
Foods rich in micronutrients are less consumed.
In France, our consumption of bread and potatoes, was divided by two, pulses by seven while we eat twice as much white sugar, meat and cheese that fifty years ago.
The density of micronutrients in our diet has declined.
Today 60% of energy intake is provided by foods rich in calories and low in vitamins and minerals.
The changing lifestyles (reducing time spent on cooking, food habits and patterns, meals eaten outside the home, nibbling constantly increasing, TV trays, almost exclusive distribution of food by supermarkets, etc.). Aggravates this phenomenon: 70% of our food now comes from industrial products.
For example we ate three times more potatoes in 1989 than 1965 (35 kg per person per year against 92 kg), but twenty times more than frozen fries…
These foods are much less rich in micronutrients as a result of treatment: sterilization, spray drying, pasteurization, ionization, slicing, cooking, extrusion, washing, refining.
The density micronutrient fruits and vegetables has decreased because:
• Excess irrigate crops that “wash” the soil and diminishes their wealth in minerals,
• The excess fertilizer, intensive agriculture, increasing the speed of plant growth reduces the time fixing micronutrients,
• The excess use of pesticides and herbicides that diminishes the richness of plant vitamins in preventing mineral processing by micro-organisms, necessary transformation to a better absorption,
• From refining plant that removes a major part of their minerals,
• From picking fruits and vegetables before the full maturation and the time between harvesting and consumption (for example, four weeks on average for tomatoes)
• Treatment of Conservation (canning, freezing and reheating destroying stocks vitamin)
More informations but only french language at the moment. http://www.iep-eu.com/ and of course here !!
