When we talk about nutrition, we are mainly concerned with food.  The terms diet and nutrition, however, are not synonymous.  Diet refers to the choice of foods a person consumes.  Nutrition refers to how the foods of the diet supply the needs of the body and react with the body.  With a better understanding of nutrition, better choices can be made regarding the diet,  ultimately leading to a healthier state of the body.

At any given time, there seems to be a diet that is fashionable to be on.  Books are published explaining the diet in detail, the infomercial hits the cable and satellite channels, and special foods are sometimes available in stores or through a mail-order company.  Famous celebrities may endorse the diet, and groups of followers form support networks and have get-togethers to share their successes.  When the diet falls out of popularity, the authors of these diet books and programs invent a new diet program, publish the book, and travel the country giving new talks.  All the followers move on to the new craze, forgetting completely about the old diet.  The old book is then left on the shelf, collecting dust, along with several other books on the subject of health and wellness.  If the original diet really worked, one would have to wonder why the new diet was necessary at all.

All these diets have one thing in common - they do not work, and neither will the next diet to arrive on the scene.  Chronic dieting simply does not work, and typically will lead to weight gain rather than to weight loss.  So, as far as diets go, forget it, drop it, and move on to learning about what does work.

Diets or diet books, which claim to have the key to health or the power to cure disease, should immediately arouse suspicion.  For example, a particular diet may claim certain benefits of eating a specific food.  The claims may be backed up by sound biochemistry, and the nutritional value of the food may be well documented.  Research may even support the benefits of that particular food in healing some particular disease.  Controlled research studies may even be published in peer-reviewed journals proving the nutritional and health benefits of the specific food.  Jesus may have even eaten the same food.  The problem is that if a person has developed either an acquired hypersensitivity, a food intolerance, or allergy to any food in question, it will cause an illness, not cure it.  Eating food that causes an allergic reaction is analogous to consuming poison, in the sense that harm is being done to the body.  No health benefits at all are found in a consuming a food that will cause an immune system reaction.  Going on a grapefruit diet would be a disaster to anyone who has a citrus allergy.  Even if the dieter did not have a food allergy, the diet based around certain foods will cause overexposure to those foods, subsequently setting up an IgG hypersensitivity that did previously did not exist.  Consequently, nutrition and diet must be not only based upon biochemical individuality, but also common sense.

With some knowledge and common sense, developing an appropriate diet can be easily accomplished  without enrolling in a university and obtaining a PhD in nutrition.  Biochemical individuality must always be taken into consideration when choosing foods, and is particularly important in the presence of any chronic disease.  Genetic factors also come into play, which often involve genetically missing or defective enzymes affecting the digestion of food.  Because of many factors, foods that are healthy for one person may be detrimental to another person’s health.  The goal, then, is to develop a diet that provides good nutrition to the body, taking into consideration biochemical individuality, genetic factors, and current health status.  In adopting a proper and appropriate diet, a variety of health issues can be avoided.