MORE HEALTHFUL DIETS from LIFE AHEAD
Getting Acquainted with Life Ahead Diet: Millions today are obsessed with diets and the diet books number in the hundreds. Life Ahead should be able to help lose wieght with any diet – and to help develop a more healthful diet than that possible from any present diet program. See Losing Weight with Life Ahead. First try the Demo Program diets to see how weekly diets 1(average), and 2 (good) and 3 (very poor) if eaten continuously will produce dramatic differences in risks of disease and Well-Days of healthy life. Try the sample Pritikin daily diet #1, Atkins daily diets #4 and #5, vegetarian diet #6 and DASH diets 7 and 8 to view their strengths and deficiencies. An analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of these 11 different popular Demo diets that is included on this site provides some interesting background on how Life Ahead can identify the long range health value of different diets. The objectively measured health value of these diets turned out to be far different than that now assumed by some experts.
Life Ahead values diets by all specific foods included, and not by labels such as low Fat or low Carbohydrate. Ten different specific "Pritikin Diet proposals or ten different "Atkins" diets will have different included foods and can have much differing health values. You must value each diet from the specific amounts of specific foods included, and not by some diet label. A recently promoted diet promoted by the National Institutes of Health is the DASH Diet is proposed to keep blood pressures down. A Life Ahead test of seven different proposed daily DASH recipes showed that some produced up to 7 years more years of computed healthful Well-Days than did others. And that all but one of these diets was seriously deficient in some needed nutrients.
Diet Health Depends on Multi-nutrients, and not just Single Nutrients: Nearly all health recommendations on diet have been based on a single health factor. The most prominent advice has been about fat and cholesterol. Then there are the arguments about carbohydrate and recommendations to use low carbohydrate. Or to use more Protein. Or diets to control blood pressure. Nearly every research study identifies a benefit of just one single factor, as a fat, vitamin, or a mineral.
But in the real world every diet includes 50 or more different nutrients. Every addition or subtraction of a single food changes the dietary proportions of all these nutrients. Life Ahead works with up to 20 of the nutrients now found to have the most important effects on risk major disease and health. Without both a computer and a biochemical engineering type analysis it is impossible to keep useful quantitative track of how all of these different factors work. As proponents of low fat diets reduce 'bad' saturated fat they at the same time can reduce fiber, antioxidants and omega-3 fats that produces a net loss rather than the supposed gain in health value. Also, although fats are often been inferred to as 'bad', polyunsaturated fats and some other unsaturated fats can be very beneficial. And foods high in fats can include offsetting beneficial antioxidants. Life Ahead - with the power of the modern computer combined with an engineering model approach - can keep track of both changes in amounts of each and all of these nutrients and can compute how a sum total of their differing amounts will produce likely differences in risks of major life limiting diseases. No single research study can duplicate this.
Life Ahead from modern research shows that saturated fat and serum cholesterol no longer is our major diet health problem. Very high cholesterol can be very harmful, but usually can be corrected by statin drugs. And today's mean or average serum cholesterol is down to less than 215. Life Ahead's analysis of a typical US diet for an average 50 year old man by identifies a potential of 3090 Well-Days or 8.5 years of healthful life for long range dietary nutrient improvement. Of this only 230 was attributed to saturated fat and cholesterol, 980 is potential from more antioxidant, 560 is potential from more omega-3 fats, 490 from more lycopene, 360 from folic acid, and 440 from more calcium, magnesium and potassium.
There has been much discussion of the 'Mediterranean' diet that includes more fruits, vegetables, and than the usual US diet. This diet produced similar cholesterol levels but a third of usual risk of heart attacks. Life Ahead confirms previous ideas that this result was near entirely due to higher values of omega-3 linolenic fats in this diet. And Life Ahead explains that differences in dietary content of the antioxidants that are included in high amount in some diets also can produce differences in the risk of heart disease of up to three times. With Life Ahead you can develop a variety of diets that will be acceptable to you that will obtain these same impressive health benefits. And you still can enjoy steaks, cakes, cookies, and other foods taken with moderation without much problem.
Diet Goals can Differ for Individuals: Much dietary advice has been in terms of grams of nutrients that are inferred to be useful for everyone. This is not correct. A man consumes many more dietary calories and nutrients per day than does a woman. Life Ahead thus converts all dietary intake and goals for nutrients to values approximately equivalent for sex, age and body weight. And these differing goals are recognized in the computation of health benefits. For example, it may require 1000 mg/day of a required mineral for a large man to reach the same health benefit as will only 500 mg/day of that mineral for a small woman. Note that RDA values of nutrients quoted here are not so adjusted - but these usually do not relate usefully to Life Ahead's health benefits.
Reducing Weight and Improving Well-Days with Diet: L:ife Ahead helps you develop your own diet. You must first enter your usual health habits and factors and complete the exercise entries before the diet program will work properly. Then start with the diet from any diet program. Or it may be better to start with your own usual or preferred diet. You can start with the easier to enter daily diet to get familiarity with the program. But you probably eventually will need to develop a usual weekly diet to accomplish the nutrient balance needed for best health and satisfaction. If you now take dietary supplements you will wish to enter the amounts of these in the 2nd entry display where noted. An alternative here is to first view the Well-Days value your entered diet will produce without supplements, and then add these in later to view the benefits of your supplements now being taken. This can be done very easily later from the result display of your diet entry.
When you finish entering a first trial diet, note the weight gain/loss rate in the display at bottom. This can guide you about a likely weight change from entered diet calories and carbo. Now exit this screen. If desired and optionally, save this diet as a record of what you are starting with, or you can print a diet out with the print option. Then browse through the 'View Analysis of this Diet' screens. When you get to the Diet Sort display it will show in order the calories contribution of each food in the diet. If you need to subtract calories, note here the foods that can be removed or reduced that will remove the most calories with least deprivation. High carbo foods will accomplish somewhat more weight loss than will low carbo foods of the same calories. The next display notes diet nutrients that are deficient in the diet. You will get this information again so it is not necessary to record these deficiencies now. Now press 'Compute this Outlook Now' to see the result screen.
The 'Actions for More Well-Days' tab will show the additional Well-Days potential from this diet and for exercise and some other factors. Now click the 'Diet Analysis' to view how specific improvements in diet will improve Well-Days. If your program has a print option this display can be printed out. Improvement of the diet now will involve three different steps. A first is to achieve the diet calories you need for weight management if this is a problem. A second is to design the diet supplements you need. A third is to add or remove some foods to achieve a best health goal.
For Weight: If you are designing a diet for weight management, fix this problem first. Click "Return to Options" and then 'Explore Food Changes.' from the Result display. This will take you back the diet entry. The option 'See Food Library' takes you to the sort display that will sort the Diet Library by calories or other nutrients in order. You also can sort your diet nutrient values similarly. Try deleting least wanted foods to achieve a weight loss value that is wanted. If you metabolism is more efficient than average you may have to select a larger weight loss than noted to accomplish your weight loss over time.
For Supplements: Life Ahead from hundreds of research studies shows that it is not practical to design a diet for best health - and for optimum values of 20 different nutrients - without some use of dietary supplements. Supplements probably will be needed for the antioxidants vitamins C and E, beta-carotene or vitamin A, and selenium. Although Life Ahead will compute maximum accepted benefits from half of the recommended values for each if all four of these antioxidants are used, or from 400 IU of vitamin E and any other antioxidant, it is best to use the suggested targets for all. Some are fat soluble and some are water soluble, and they can work differently. They are inexpensive and easy to take, and in these amounts do not produce negative effects. Calcium, magnesium, zinc and folic acid targets also probably will be best achieved via use of some supplements. Write down the amounts needed for these as both total needs and the differences between targets and amount already included in diet plus supplements. Supplements are available for omega-3's and lycopene. But it is better to try to develop dietary foods to provide these needs if possible Usual supplements for potassium include too small amounts of this to of much use vs. better results possible from modification of dietary foods.
Now find a multi-vitamin supplement package that will supply most of the dietary supplements you need. It is desirable to obtain at least 200 IU and preferable 400 IU of vitamin E and 500 mg of vitamin C. 100 mg of selenium and 400 mcg of folic acid often will be needed for optimum protection. You may have to take two or three supplements or one supplement two or three times daily to achieve this objective. A vast number of multi-vitamin supplements are now marketed. Avoid using more of a supplement amount than that noted as a target value in Life Ahead. Excessive amounts of some can be harmful.
For Foods: A key diet area that must be managed with foods involve the fats and fiber. High saturated fat raises both serum cholesterol and and cardiovascular increases risk of cancer. Low diet fiber can do the same thing. But many people today have been aware of this and thus may find larger gains in Well-Days from modifying other factors. Transfats are very harmful, and the Life Ahead library may not identify some foods high in transfats adequately. Watch food product labels for transfat amounts.
Omega-3 fats and lycopene are the important new areas for diet management that still are poorly recognized. These needs can be readily met by foods - as some salmon every week for omega-3's and a tomato equivalents for lycopene. Life Ahead identifies a variety of ways for achieving needed targets for these nutrients. Write down the differences between target amounts and present dietary amounts of these nutrients. The information provided in the Sort display will suggest how target amounts can be achieved. Dietary supplements of fish oil are verified as substitutes for omega-3's, and a partly verified supplement is available for lycopene. But it always is better to obtain nutrients from foods if possible.
An Example: Try how an example of how a correction in diet can be accomplished. Select daily diet #1 from the Demo menu, press "Continue" and 'Compute Outlook--'. Access the diet display from the result display with 'Actions for More Well Days' and 'Diet Analysis.' Dietary Fiber in Daily Diet #1 is noted here as low by about 12 grams. Click 'Return to Options' and click 'Explore Food Changes'. This takes you back to the diet entry display. Now we need to find how to get 12 more grams of fiber into the diet. To do this click the 'See Food Library' option. This lists all foods in the Life Ahead library in order of their nutrients. (Note that these values are not adjusted for sex and body weight.) Click on 'Fiber' to see the foods that include the most fiber. Nine different food portions include 5 or more grams of fiber. We can select any of these, but say for example we select the Bran Type Cereal. Exit the library and the program will go back to the diet entry. Now ask for 'Bread Grains and Pasta' to find this cereal, and double click it to place 1.5 portions of it into the breakfast diet and click 'OK'. The similar portions of oatmeal in the original diet has little fiber. Try taking oatmeal out by double clicking this item in the diet panel to eliminate it. Exit and compute the result again. Now the result display shows that we have a gain of about 600 Well-Days in health. Access 'Actions--' again, and the 'Diet Analysis'. Note much of the loss of Well-Days for fiber is now gone. And note that this substitution also removed most of the previous loss for Folic Acid. We could have found that Bran Type Cereal would do this from the food library if we had sorted on the foods content of Folic Acid. And attaining a fiber target often is difficult to achieve. You do not have to obtain full target values to achieve most health benefits that are potential.
We can go on via the same approach to correct other nutrient deficiencies by food selection. But we still have a major loss in Well-Days from this diet because of deficient antioxidants. Although we could work on changing foods to accomplish this, this would require a large number of food changes. The most productive next approach here is to add the needed dietary supplements into this daily diet to obtain these needed antioxidants as was described for 'Supplements' above. .
Many of the food choices that Life Ahead shows are best will be similar to the diet advice that long has appeared in health letters and books. But Life Ahead will show via its quantification of how much of these are in your diet, how important the different dietary choices really are, how you can get the most benefit, and give you a basis for balancing health and enjoyment. You often will be reassured to find that things derided by the health establishment – salt and eggs as example - can be enjoyed because taken in moderation they appear cause minimal probable health problem.
Entering Diets: You can enter multiple daily or weekly diets into Life Ahead. The program can sum and average values for consecutive diets entered. Much more about how to do this is described in the program. Before entering your own diet, experiment with the Food Library Tabs to see where to find the various foods included in the library. And if some important food you eat is not listed, consider entering its nutrients into the Food Library from the package label as an added food. If you cannot find all nutrients from the package, you may be able to get them from a library source book or one sold in book stores. A comprehensive internet source for extensive nutrients in each food is www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/SR12/sr12.html Cut and paste this long URL to reach this most helpful site quickly.
Life Ahead can analyze diets in two different ways. First, after completing a diet entry or loading a previous diet, you can proceed through the diet displays that will show successively how calories and fats, vitamins, and minerals in each meal, in total and in total foods plus supplements compare with good health targets. These displays also provide prose telling about the values of various supplements. You can sort your diet on any food factor to see which foods produced the most calories, fat, etc. You then see some overall analyses of diet and of diet deficiencies, and can compute a program result. Or second, after completing your diet entry you can view the Result Display immediately and also learn how each nutrient value in this diet compares with health targets, and how many added Well-Days are potential for improving values of each of these nutrients. Access the "Analyze---' tab and then ask for 'Diet Analysis.' to reach the diet analysis.
Life Ahead also can identify how the nutrients in any diet entered will produce different risks of 10 different disease and disease-death groups to any future age to life expectancy. It will detail effects of diet factors on risks of specific cardiovascular diseases and five types of cancer, and compare these with probable results for using better diet habits.
Valuing a Food with Life Ahead. Life Ahead provides what now is believed to be a unique capability - that of valuing the health benefit of any food from up to 20 of its included nutrients. This was illustrated for the Demo example above for adding fiber to a diet. First compute a result of one of your saved diets, or from weekly Demo #1. Before doing this first computation press the Reset option to initialize the Well-Days for a first entered or base diet. Now from this initial Result Display for this diet, click on 'Explore Food Changes' and the diet entry display will reappear. Add any amount of any food, or subtract any food from the existing diet. Enter 7 in number of days per week if a weekly entry to obtain a result for a daily entry. Re-compute the result. The change in Well-Days from this change in diet will appear in the Result Display. You can analyze further in the 'Diet Analysis' the changes made by this food. To see such changes, make a record of the key Well-Days values in 'Diet Analysis', make a screen print of the base diet 'Analysis' using a program such as Parson's screen print, or print out the diet display if your program has this print option. This will show the benefit or debit to long range health for adding or subtracting this specific food from the diet.
This food valuation method values the change is Well-Days made by adding an amount of a specific food to just this specific base diet. Life Ahead re-computes the value of the modified diet and compares this with the value of the base diet. Thus adding a given food to a poor diet can produce a significant benefit; adding the same food it to a fairly good diet can result in no benefit, and adding the same food to a very healthy diet can produce a negative contribution. Because dietary supplements usually will improve Well-Days values substantially, a quite different result can be obtained for adding a food to a diet without supplements, and adding the same food to the same diet with supplements. Thus it is most meaningful to test the addition or subtraction of foods from your own usual diet. Using a weekly base diet you can explore the effect of eating this food for just one or more days in the week.
Also, contributions of foods that include substantial antioxidants can be far lower in a supplemented diet than in a non-supplemented diet. For example, grapefruit is strong in antioxidants. Adding a half grapefruit per day to a non-supplemented average diet improved a diet result by about 400 Well-Days. Adding the same grapefruit to a fully supplemented diet generated only about 60 computed added Well-Days. Two factors explain this. First, it is more difficult for grapefruit or any other new food to improve the higher health value of the supplemented diet. And second, the supplemented diet already included the maximum amounts of antioxidants that are now computed to provide benefits. Thus the grapefruit antioxidants no longer can provide their potential benefits. All nutrient health factors will have some limiting level of potential benefit, and Life Ahead acknowledges conservative values for these limiting benefits.
Life Ahead Food Values can be Reassuring. Health advice the harm of fat and cholesterol has motivated many people to consider some foods as near poisons. Eggs, salt, and even meat can be shunned as things rarely to eat and enjoy. The Life Ahead valuations show that such concerns can be absurd. Adding one egg each day to the average US weekly diet #1 subtracts 69 computed Well-Days for a 50 year old man. This is for eating that egg every day for the entire rest of life. Eating it once a week for life makes this a meaningless loss of 10 days. The harm of a Big Mac every day for life works out to about 1.3 years loss of Well-Days. And adding fries and a shake to this every day can increase this loss to nearly 4 years. But a usual taking of nearly any food occasionally computes to trivial effects on long range health. The eating of foods can bring enormous enjoyment to us. It is unlikely that the eating of any usual food just occasionally will have an appreciable effect on our future Well-Days.
The Concept of Collapsing Benefits: Another factor that users should understand is that health benefits in the real world are not amounts that can be added or subtracted. This also is described elsewhere on this website. And that a risk can never become equal to or lower than zero. A good diet can reduce heart disease by 50%; good cardiofitness can easily reduce risk by 50%. If both risks are so reduced, the result cannot be zero risk. Rather, this produces a risk reduction of 75%. Now each benefit contributes only 37.5%. If we reduce risk 50% by each of three factors, risk reduction becomes 87.5% and each factor now reduces risk for each is reduced to about 29%.
The change computed for changing a single food is for just this single change.. If multiple food changes are made, benefits will become less than that computed by this method for the sum of individual values for each. Life Ahead diet related and other risks in Well-Days are prorated risks or the lower values obtained for each factor from a multiple reduction in factor risks. If you change just one of any of these factors, the benefits from this single factor change will be much larger that these prorated risks.
Main Menu See also Losing Weight with Life Ahead
A Note on that never ending Controversy: Foods vs. Supplements--Some in the health research field have been conducting a hate campaign against diet supplements for decades. The so-called RDA values of various Vitamin and factors that are amounts needed to prevent certain diseases of deficiency are seriously confused with the sometimes far larger amounts now verified to be useful in preventing cardiovascular diseases, cancer and other significant health problems. We now have tens of thousands of research studies that verify health benefits for nearly two dozen supplements. Biochemistry has now shown the enormously important role of antioxidants in slowing the progress of both of these major disease groups. Life ahead shows that practical diets of foods per se usually will not provide even nearly the amounts of antioxidants that research on supplements shows produce best health protection.
The Life Ahead analysis approached this problem objectively and with no preconceived bias. The result: Today’s research provides a solid endorsement for use of optimum supplements. Used continuously for 20 years or more, a convenient addition of antioxidants alone in dietary supplements should increase Well-Days of life by more than 6 years for US men and women of age 50 that obtain no other accompanying diet or other health improvement. The research from 140 key study comparisons verifying this estimate is included in the accompanying Health Research Library. And other supplements can contribute beyond those that operate as antioxidants. It is difficult to visualize any program of public health that could contribute more to the future health and life of our population per unit of cost than that of a proper promotion of the use of dietary supplements. The present confusing and long out of date RDA system does not accomplish this.
And important qualification that applies to both foods and supplements is that most appear to modify the rate at which both atherosclerosis and cancer progress during life. Thus their benefit develops as a function of "Amount and times years of use." Thus a specific change in either a food or supplement in a diet usually will require 7-10 years of continued use for good benefits to develop. Life Ahead imposes limits on both amounts and years of use that are accepted for present valuations. Because nutrients in certain foods may have been taken for a much longer time than the same nutrients added in supplements, the net benefit of a food nutrient up to a certain age or time could be larger than that of a similar amount of the same nutrient included in a supplement. Clinical studies on vitamin E that really measured antioxidant effects for 2 years and this mostly for coronary patients taking other medication are of no value except for confirming the broader confirmed mechanism that its short term use will not be very beneficial. The global research summarized in the accompanying health library show the most probable truth.
Some researchers and nutritionists have long claimed that “Vitamins and minerals in foods are better for health than those in supplements. From the viewpoint of chemistry it is not scientifically credible that the human body can tell where each molecule of a vitamin and mineral chemical it uses came from, and then utilize only those molecules that came from a preferred source. The main body of research on minerals and vitamins identifies added health effects of amounts in supplements taken in a wide variety of diets of foods. These are the values used in Life Ahead. There may be some small differences in chemistry of some categories of nutrients as present in food and supplements, but such effect needs quantitative verified identification.
Thus a key argument here appears less about health values of supplements but is that of verifying how a food can have more benefit than that computed from its known included nutrients that could alternately be included in supplements. It is likely that foods include healthful components not now included in supplements cited. Thus Life Ahead advice endorses including antioxidant rich foods as first choice, and then adding supplements needed to reach optimum overall values. If specific benefits for such 'other components' can be identified that identify benefits beyond values now included for food nutrients it will become an objective of Life Ahead to include them.
An assumption in Life Ahead is that there is a limit to the amount of any vitamin, mineral or antioxidant that can be effective. These limits are now set conservatively from available research. Actual long range benefits of individual supplements might be substantially higher than those now estimated. An additional limit is placed on the combined valuations of 4 antioxidants. It is quite possible the amounts beyond these now-set limits can contribute further. But even if this is true, added amounts of nutrient chemicals either in foods or supplements could provide this contribution. The fact that benefits of specific foods as meats, fruits, and vegetables defined by research can be forecast well from their now included nutrient values (See the Health Research Library) suggests that most health benefits of foods can mostly be explained by their content of the 20 different nutrients now considered. But this in no way denies that other nutrients in foods can contribute further.
Further discussion on this is welcome.