The time of year begins when the need to look for miraculous diets to achieve a thin or extremely marked body and to adapt to current social stereotypes that often do not mean having a nutritionally healthy body is urgently needed. This is something we know, but often forget.
Likewise, we live in times where there are thousands of “magic” pills, powders or additives to lose weight or increase muscle mass. An era in which we must not only know what we eat, but analyze what they are selling us and, more importantly, how and what they are informing us of.
Because of this, we have access to an excessive amount of food information that travels through various channels at the same time that the food industry grows rapidly. Day after day, new food products are released on the market for each stage of life and for various biological or pathological situations. Much of the information we find in the various media misinforms and the vast majority lacks scientific foundation. Far from clarifying the nutritional landscape for us, it confuses us.
Extremism in fad diets and misinformation, in the long term, can cause deficiencies in our body, increasing the increasing rates of chronic diseases and existing malnutrition problems at a national and global level.
It’s time to understand that nutrition is the foundation of everything. Without nutrition there is no well-being, without well-being it is impossible to carry out our daily tasks. Information, its correct management and solid, respectable, reliable professionals are necessary, reaching out to people who achieve communication clarity, covering the entire food chain. We talked a little more about this with Diego Sívori, Director of the Degree in Nutrition at UADEbelonging to the Faculty of Health Sciencesdirected by Dr. Federico Saavedra.
Journalist: How much information/data that we have about nutrition today has some kind of academic and scientific foundation?
Diego Sivori: It is advisable, before giving advice, that it be based on scientific evidence. There are different scales of scientific rigor, since many times a single article on a subject does not imply evidence and, beyond that, the places where people generally look for information on nutrition are not usually scientific. In general, people rely on articles from newspapers, magazines or social networks, where there is a recommendation from a professional who has tried something and it has worked and where a minimum detail can determine if the health of the people is put at risk. people.
As professionals, we always try to base ourselves on the highest degree of scientific evidence. For example, we could say that when a piece of news is based on experiments on animals it is of low scientific quality, because it does not mean that it can be extrapolated to a human being. On the other hand, and contrary to the above, we can see descriptive cross-sectional studies (this is how a photo of society is analyzed at a time when an eating pattern or a causal reason is seen). The fact that we show that in a population there are more cases of hypertension and that there is more consumption of foods high in sodium, will take a picture of that population, but it does not mean that one thing is associated with the other. For this, we need more longitudinal studies that are based on a larger sample, such as systematic reviews of clinical trials where it is seen whether the modification of an eating pattern or a diet gives results or worsens the health of this population.
Finally, as a higher degree of evidence, nutritionists have meta-analyses: the analysis of many randomized controlled clinical trials, where the conclusions of a large number of studies are verified in order to reach a conclusion on a subject. This is what tends to have more value as scientific evidence.
Journalist: How many of the diets circulating today are complete, efficient and truly healthy?
sívori: The problem with the use and abuse of diets is that they do not comply with one of the fundamental laws of nutrition, which is the adequacy law. This means that the person must adapt to a diet that does not look like one, that does not respect their tastes, habits, or clinical situation and tries, logically, to adapt to a system that perhaps gives them short-term benefits but that in the long term it generates a rebound effect or a health problem. In general, these types of diets, which come with a kind of magical resolution, always hide a secret that makes them more effective. They are low-calorie and very restrictive diets that not only put the metabolism in check, but also scare it, generating compensation and, many times, not covering the multi-nutrients, vitamins and minerals that the body needs when having such a limited diet. Sometimes even mono-nutrient diets are used, where a single food group is consumed and the variety of food that is important is discarded.
Journalist: Is it important to review what we consume?
sívori: Many of today’s pathologies have to do with a lack of accessibility of correct information, with a physical characteristic, or with being in places where it is difficult to obtain a variability of nutrients. Other times it is linked to economic characteristics, where a person or family cannot correctly obtain a variety of foods and nutritional predominance, while on other occasions it is related to a lack of food education that allows the person to know what they are consuming. In the latter case, informal advice appears on social networks or the marketing strategies of certain products that make us believe that they were always of high nutritional quality, when scientifically this is not the case.
But, since not all people have the possibility of accessing the nutritional information of food, it is important to seek advice from a professional who teaches and explains how to correctly read a label and see how many nutrients are necessary in a food portion, not just for one , but many times to also take care of the little ones.
Journalist: How does the Argentine and world situation affect our daily nutrition?
sívori: Worldwide, and Argentina is no exception, the rates of chronic diseases are increasing. Diseases that progress in slow motion, that are silent, such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension.
There is a trend that, the lower the economic position, the greater the presence of chronic diseases. This has to do with the acquisition of products that are cheaper, but in turn, more lacking in essential nutrients, such as proteins, vitamins and minerals, increasing the consumption of processed carbohydrates, sugar and salt. Perhaps, it would be possible to compensate some of these effects with food education, which, for example, would help us to know which foods are cheaper, but at the same time have good nutritional criteria, such as legumes, for example.
Journalist: Is there health marketing?
sívori: Exists. Even in our Nutrition degree at UADE, we not only have the subject in “Marketing in Nutrition”, but also “Communication in Nutrition”, since both subjects and specialties collaborate to add value to the health message that has always been diminished in relation to the marketing of products of low nutritional quality. These materials are intended to attract glances and tempt with health, with food of good nutritional quality and apply communication strategies that generate campaigns that are remembered and viralized in order to multiply our messages. This is, in part, the role of a health professional: to multiply healthy messages that reach as many people as possible.
Journalist: What tools should a nutritionist have today?
sívori: A current nutrition professional must not only have all their academic training in the clinical part, in the part of public health and health services administration, but must also have a good management of soft and communication skills. Added to this are marketing tools, strategies to be able to add value to your professional role, having notions of managing technologies associated with your profession and something (which is very important to me), which are management skills. Know how to lead your own team and know how to start your own ventures. Currently, there are many channels linked to nutritional information and there are many skills that can be an obstacle for health to reach many people. For this reason, in the UADE Nutrition Degree we are generating modern professionals. Not only with a solid academic training linked to the clinic, but also with the development of soft skills with the addition of technological knowledge and with training in management roles.
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