I don't know when it started, we have subtly need to rely on the nutrients on food packaging to judge whether food is healthy and suitable for ourselves. For example, many people are very concerned about the calories (calories), protein, fat, vitamin groups, trace elements and other content written on the bag. This behavior might not have been understood if lived 20 years ago, but it is now commonplace in developed regions.
We need to pay attention to the superficial causes of food nutrients
This is mainly because a large proportion of today's food is no longer natural food, but deeply processed food purchased from grocery stores and restaurants. Leaving aside the fact that the ingredients themselves already have many problems of contamination and lack of nutrients, the purchase of processed food may be due to oil, sugar, salt, food additives and cooking methods that have changed the natural nutritional balance of the food. There is a lot of evidence that processed foods, especially deep-processed meat, beverages, etc., can lead to an increase in the incidence of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and so on. This is the superficial reason why we have to focus on the nutritional content of food today.
The scientific community is also constantly pandering to the need to judge whether food is healthy or not through its nutritional content. On May 24, Giulia Menichetti and Albert-László Barabási, researchers in network science and medicine in the United States, published a study in the journal Nature. Through their analysis of a total of 100 chemical nutrients in the USDA's 4889 animal and plant ingredients, they found that the nutrient content of these biological ingredients in plants and animals shows a power law because the metabolism of the organism itself follows a certain natural limit.
In the case of apples, for example, an apple contains a multitude of nutrients, ranging from the largest amount of water to the smallest amount of vitamin K, which varies by 8 orders of magnitude. However, a scatter plot of its nutrient content shows that the nutrient distribution of each ingredient follows a power law distribution. The vertical axis below represents the various nutrients in an apple, and the horizontal axis represents the content of various nutrients corresponding to an apple.
Power law distribution is a mathematical concept, interested in in-depth can look up some explanatory materials on the Internet, below a serious power law distribution map. In simple terms, for an apple, the nutrient content in the middle state is the most, and the nutrient content in the state of extremely small or extreme content is the least (one end and one tail in the figure, such as the minimum content of vitamin K, the maximum content of water). In addition, the researchers analyzed not only apples, but also more than 4,000 other ingredients, and found this pattern.
Interested friends can read the detailed data and conclusions in the research report through the link at the bottom of this article. What's the use of our main focus here on this discovery?
Researchers believe that the nutritional content of foods suitable for human health should conform to the power law distribution in the natural state, such foods meet the needs of natural foods that have been precipitated in the genes of millions of years of evolution. The researchers gave a score of 0-100 to 50,000 deeply processed foods based on the degree to which the nutrients of the food deviated from the power law curve, and the higher the score, the farther away from the natural nutrient content of the food, which can also be understood as the less healthy. This can be found on the http://www.truefood.tech website.
This provides a new basis for us to judge whether processed foods are healthy. For medical professionals or food safety regulators who are genuinely concerned about health, this approach to assessing the health of processed foods is worth paying attention to. For individuals, if you know which of the various processed foods you eat on a daily basis, the natural power law of separation of nutrients is far away, you can also reduce or even avoid continuing to buy such foods.
But unfortunately, at present, this website only gives a health assessment of the processed foods popular in the West, and does not include the processed foods that are popular in China for the time being. It is hoped that in the future there will be a similar website for nutritional health assessments of processed foods in China.
We need to focus on the underlying causes of food's nutrient content
For millions of years, humans did not break up food and crush it to observe its nutrient content measured in milligrams or even micrograms. That's because for a long time, the human body and the natural environment have reached a harmonious match, without paying too much attention to the nutrients that are invisible to the naked eye, and through the naked eye and appetite, they can better find the food they need.
Although modern science has let us know that the body actually absorbs various nutrients in food, this is already due to the decline in human existence, and it has to compensate for the scientific ability to distinguish increasingly complex food (see the principle of weak compensation in the General Theory of The Evolution of Things). This is the deeper reason why we need to focus on the nutritional content of food.
Because today's food, even if it is natural, absorbs heavy metals and antibiotics from soil, pesticides, and feed. Coupled with the large population and the extreme pursuit of efficiency by industrial development, office workers have to rely on the purchase of processed foods. Processed foods are driven by commercial interests and constantly cater to stimulate our taste buds, high salt, high oil, high sugar, high spicy, high hemp, and various preservatives, which are the only ways to make commodities sell well. This series involves complex social factors such as economy and culture, and in order to maintain the temporary stable survival of billions of people, they have to continue to move forward on this road.
In this social context, it is no longer possible to tell the nutritional value and health of food by the naked eye and appetite alone. Nowadays, more and more people are beginning to pay attention to the nutritional content on food packaging bags, and even measure the nutritional components in food themselves, but they are limited by the incompleteness of various knowledge and methods, and they always treat the symptoms rather than the root causes.
Paying attention to whether food is healthy or not requires the whole society to improve the food culture and environment
While the best way is not to buy processed ingredients, it's hard to do that these days. Office workers don't have time to cook or can't cook, and children have to drink milk powder, and a little money can't help but go to restaurants or supermarkets to buy various canned instant noodles.
The above assessment of whether the nutrient content of processed foods conforms to the natural power law distribution is always somewhat effective, and we hope that tools will appear in the future to facilitate personal use and assess the health of the ingredients.
But in the longer term, we should hope that laws similar to the natural ingredients of food will be implemented in food safety testing standards. At the same time, we should change the food culture that advocates the pursuit of stimulation and fast food, and change the production environment of food. Only when society as a whole changes can we maximize the benefits to individuals.
There is still a long way to go.
Living in the 21st century, we are facing many health challenges from the living environment, and health management has become something that everyone needs and should learn today. Life 100 (bbs.life100.live) is an online health management platform focused on personal health management. Based on the philosophical ideas of Mr. Wang Dongyue's "General Theory of Physical Evolution", with the help of modern scientific information as evidence, it clearly explains the root causes of diseases related to health care and health management, the nature of health, health concepts and methods, wearable devices, digital therapies, health risk factors, excessive medical treatment and other complex issues, and at the same time helps us understand the health monitoring services, health risk assessment services, health intervention and promotion services of modern medical construction. Let's explore together from a "personal" perspective what works for our own health. Welcome your attention.