`Unified eating plan' recommended

Health authorities in the United States have joined forces to devise an eating plan designed to help stave off disease and keep you well.

"People were confused and are confused about what diet to follow to reduce heart risks or cancer risks," admitted joint author of the plan, Prof Richard J. Deckelbaum, professor of paediatrics and nutrition at Columbia University and paediatrician at Columbia Presbyterian Centre of New York Presbyterian Hospital.

"The good news is that we don't need one diet to prevent heart disease, another to decrease cancer risk and yet another to prevent obesity and diabetes," Prof Deckelbaum said. "You don't need a different diet for different diseases."

He and co-author Dr Edward A. Fisher of Mount Sinai Cardiovascular Institute in New York published a report on the Unified Dietary Guidelines in the current issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. The guidelines in turn were devised by the US Heart Association, Cancer Society, Dietetic Association, Academy of Paediatrics and the National Institutes of Health. Each group published its own diet designed to avoid disease. "A few of us realised that the guidelines for the societies were similar," Prof Deckelbaum said. They therefore decided to get together to produce just one all-inclusive diet for preventing disease. "We think that by getting this message across people will be motivated to follow a healthy lifestyle diet."

Following a healthy diet gives you "a measure of protection against all the biggest killers", Dr Fisher said, including heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity. They weren't a guarantee of health but did represent a lessening of risk.

The Unified Dietary Guidelines don't dictate a calorie intake, Prof Deckelbaum said, because each person's daily requirement varied. It recommends however that no more than 10 per cent of total calories come from saturated fat, as found in meat and other animal products, and no more than 30 per cent of total calories come from all types of fat.

It says that just over half of all the energy you consume should come from complex carbohydrates such as cereals, grains, fruits and vegetables. Dietary cholesterol should also be limited to 300 milligrams or less each day. It also limits salt intake to one teaspoon per day.

Recommendations such as these were useful but it remained very difficult for most people to adjust their eating habits, stated Prof John Scott, head of the biochemistry department at Trinity College. Certain essential nutrients might also be left short despite taking a healthy diet.

"Using the food pyramid is fine but there are a few very well defined exceptions," he said. An essential vitamin, folic acid, could help cut heart disease and stroke but few people ate enough liver or green vegetables to get enough from their diet. Iron deficiency could cause anaemia, one of the most common medical disorders, he said, and many people were also short of calcium and trace elements. Supplements could provide a useful back-up to a good diet.