Encyclopedia of Health and Medicine

Nutrition and Diet 175
CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE (CVD). Following shortly
was the first official recommendation to limit consumption
of a particular food, eggs, as an effort to
prevent disease. In the decades since, research has
confirmed a tight and intricate relationship
between DIET AND HEALTH, and diet-related health
conditions became the focus of renewed effort to
identify nutritious, healthful foods.
HEALTH CONDITIONS LINKED TO DIETARY FACTORS
ATHEROSCLEROSIS
BREAST CANCER
cervical dysplasia
CERVICAL CANCER
COLORECTAL CANCER
CORONARY ARTERY DISEASE (CAD)
DENTAL CARIES
HYPERLIPIDEMIA
HYPERTENSION
OBESITY
PERIPHERAL VASCULAR DISEASE (PVD) PROSTATE CANCER
STOMACH CANCER
type 2 DIABETES
Current Challenges and Future Directions
A key challenge today is the rapidly changing
understanding of the relationships between nutrition
and health and between nutrition and disease.
Though a general range of nutrient intake is
adequate for most healthy adults, it is becoming
increasingly clear that individual variations in
NUTRITIONAL NEEDS and nutrient intake can make
the difference between health and disease. The
medical community is in transition in regard to
nutritional recommendations, shifting from the
system in place since the early 1940s to methods
of NUTRITIONAL ASSESSMENT that take individual variations
more into consideration. Current research
is exploring the ways in which NUTRIENTS may
serve to lower health risk factors, such as for CVD
and diabetes, over the length of the lifespan.