What Is Nutrition Imbalance

In the Western world, clean good food is in ready supply, and there is no real reason why anyone should suffer from improper nutrition or nutrition imbalance which is the result of inadequate or improper nutritional intake. However, failure to understand the changing needs of the bodies, for instance, in illness, pregnancy, and as people grow older, land the dismaying lack of nutrition available in the food due to environmental factors, means that cases of nutrition imbalances are on the increase in richer countries.

The great Western diet has come up short for a number of people. The links between disease and diet are not fully understood as yet, but most of the people do know that improper nutrition can cause pathological illness affecting all parts of the body. Imbalanced nutrition or adequate diets with an excessive amount of fat calories and cholesterol has obscured the fact that internal thickening or weight gain occurs spontaneously in time on low-fat cholesterol-free diets during the aging process, and that intimal thickening can be accelerated by dietary angiotoxic risk factors. Electron microscopy of arterial tissue from animal models identified degenerated smooth muscle cells in the fetus from sows kept on low fat or cholesterol free diets.

After birth, gradually the degenerated smooth muscle cells increase in number with age. The presence of angiotoxic risk factors such as oxidized cholesterol and vitamin D3 or cholecalciferol in the diet of such animal models increased the frequency of smooth muscle cell death in their arteries. Two types of pathology can be developed in the thoracic aorta by constant or short term feeding of 12.5 times more vitamin D than usually present in commercial rations; 1) a diffuse fibroelastic intimal thickening in the thoracic aorta or arteriosclerosis with no evidence of lipid deposition by continuous feeding of vitamin D or 2) an initimal thickening in the thoracic aorta and intimal thickening with foam cells and extracellular lipid deposits or atherosclerosis in the coronary arteries after a short period of supplemental vitamin D followed by 3 to 4 months of supplement-free diets.

These two types of arterial damage were similar to that in the plugs of thoracic aorta obtained as a by-product of elective coronary bypass surgery. Although all of the possible sources of oxidized cholesterol in the diet have as yet not been identified, laboratory studies have recognized oxidized cholesterol as an angiotoxic factor. Since the major population groups that consume less vitamin D-supplemented foods, less deep fat fried cholesterol containing foods, and less hydrogenated fats have a lower incidence of coronary heart disease than Americans, it seems judicious for food processors to decrease these previously unconsidered risk factors to a minimum. This could be done by eliminating vitamin D2 and D3 from all kind of vitamin supplements, from all food and cereal products and from the diet of livestock 1 month before they were killed so that the intake of vitamin D is no larger than the 400 IU/quart in milk which is necessary to prevent rickets in children.

Deep fat fryers, which are kept at almost 200 C for 24 hr/day, could perhaps be substituted with microwave ovens in fast food chain outlets. Processors could hydrogenate vegetable oils to a minimum trans fatty acid content and rearrange this fat with polyunsaturated fats to create high polyunsaturated fats trans-free margarines and shortenings.

• John Palsson
• 17/11/2008, 10:30 AM
• 0 Comments