Top 5 Nutrition Articles of the Year

Nutrition remained in the forefront during the first full year of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic as patients scampered for supplements to improve their immunity, with doctors adjusting to provide increased counsel on diet, supplements and building individual immunity.

The Top 5 most popular nutrition articles on the Chiropractic Economics website in 2021 included the topics of decreasing early-life nutrition in U.S. children, proposed nutritional supplements legislation, omega-3 benefits, the payoffs of a healthy diet for general wellness, and the future of “personalized nutrition.”

Studies show the vast consumption of processed foods among children in the U.S. is setting up an entire generation for disease susceptibility later in life.

“Even some infant formulas are classified as ultra-processed due to the ingredients they contain,” writes Christina Debusk. “At the same time as ultra-processed food consumption is increasing, the consumption of unprocessed or minimally processed food is decreasing in our nation’s youth, dropping from 28.8% to 23.5% in this same time frame. This suggests that kids today are likely ingesting fewer nutrients and more added substances in their early-life nutrition diets, which could not only impact their health today but also when they get older.”

Here are the Top 5 most popular nutrition articles from 2021:

5. From bad to worse: new study sounds alarm on early-life nutrition of U.S. children and teens

By CHRISTINA DEBUSK
The authors indicate that a 20-year study found that, in 2018, approximately 67% of a U.S. youth’s diet consisted of ultra-processed foods. That’s an increase from 61.4% in 1999 … A piece of 2016 research adds that intestinal microbiota is developed in the first few years of life and calls diet a “principal contributor” to microbial composition. If this composition is off, disease can set in.

4. New legislation introduced to expand access to nutritional supplements for Americans

By CE STAFF
Legislation introduced in May in the U.S. Senate by Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) would expand health savings accounts (HSA), health reimbursement arrangements and flexible spending accounts (FSA) to cover dietary supplements … Mounting evidence suggests a link between vitamin D deficiency and serious COVID-19 illnesses, and experts in the U.S. and around the world have urged policymakers to consider the benefits of vitamin D supplements to help support immune systems and prevent serious illnesses.

3. Research shows fish fats, omega-3 benefits for migraines

By CHRISTINA DEBUSK
At the end of the study, both groups following the diets with EPA and DHA intake increased to 1.5 grams daily reported decreased total headache hours per day when compared to the control. They also decreased their number of headache days per month, with the group that also reduced their linoleic acid intake showing the greatest improvement.

2. Does a healthy diet = optimal health and wellness?

By CHRIS D. MELETIS, ND
There’s no doubt that our patients are overfed but undernourished. A U.S. national survey of 16,444 people four years and older, NHANES 2007-2010, found that 94.3% of people in the U.S. do not receive the daily requirement for vitamin D, 88.5% don’t get enough vitamin E, 52.2% don’t consume enough magnesium, 44.1% calcium, 43% vitamin A, and 38.9% vitamin C. Potassium, choline and vitamin K intakes were also low in regard to optimal health and wellness

1. Is personalized nutrition the future of patient wellness?

BY TINA BEYCHOK
An article from last year in Nature Medicine published the results from an ongoing study of metabolic responses, following eating identical meals, among a group of more than 1,002 subjects.5 Researchers found that differences between blood triglyceride, glucose, and insulin could vary by as much as 10-fold between individuals, leading them to hypothesize that individual gut biome may play a larger role in this variance than originally thought.

For more nutrition articles or information go to chiroeco.com/?s=nutrition.