Diet-conscious consumers become health-conscious
About the article
This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from June 1983.
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The '70s brought a new health consciousness to the forefront; consumers turned on such staples as bacon and eggs and well-marbled beef, not in a concession to calories but because cholesterol became a dirty word.
Later, consumers started abandoning the salt shaker en masse. Now it's caffeine that's being treated like Public Enemy No. 1. "Consumers are making demands on food companies — and they're listening," said Kathryn Justyn, registered dietitian and dietitian-nutritionist for California Lutheran College in Thousand Oaks, Calif. She also has a private practice where she works with patients referred by doctors for nutrition counseling.
A quick trip down a supermarket aisle confirms Justyn's point: There are cholesterol-free imitation bacons, sausages and even eggs packaged in cartons, sans shell. There are low-sodium and no-sodium salt substitutes. There are low-calorie sugar substitutes.
Check the beverage section and you can pick up a six-pack of sugar-free caffeine-free soda. Not even alcohol has escaped the public edict sales are brisk for light beers and wines.
Justyn and 1,000 delegates to the California Dietetic Association's recent annual meeting in San Diego listened as colleague Jerome Berkman updated a comprehensive study on health care and public awareness. The concensus was that Americans today are assuming new responsibilities for their own healthcare. As a result, some people are perhaps getting smart enough about their own nutrition that they're passing up fad diets. Nutrition has come into its own and, therefore, dawns the day of the dietitian.
"Seven years ago people were asked to name the two most significant people responsible for their healthcare. Not surprisingly, doctors came in first, nurses second," said Berkman, director of food and nutrition at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
"But public awareness has shifted radically since that first study. Seven years later, the public overwhelmingly voted themselves as the person most responsible for their own healthcare."
Justyn added: "People are beginning to accept the responsibility for their own health. They want to be the ones who make final decisions about issues that affect their bodies. The doctor has a new role. He (or she) is seen as an expert to be consulted, not as the final authority.
"What's happening in the health field is that physicians are now putting registered dietitians in their offices. Patients are interested in preventive medicine, and good eating habits play a major role in Cont'd. on page B3 "good health."
Laymen who haven't had much formal education in the field of nutrition started the health trend back in the late '60s, or at least that's the way many dietitians who attended the conference saw it. These laymen turned out books and literature that caught the attention of hundreds of thousands of followers.
"The media educated the public, and now they (the public) want more and better information," according to dietitian Candy Cumming, author of "Eater's Guide," which features nutrition basics for busy people. Cumming, a nutrition consultant to several health-promotion groups, said she thinks the public is ready to hear and understand nutrition basics from the experts - dietitians. As one dietitian reluctantly admitted: "The public turned to the layman nutritionist for help in the beginning of this health movement, and that was anyone who had spent at least one hour in a health food store reading the labels from vitamin bottles. Dietitians were those unfeeling people who served up unappetizing food to a captured audience in hospitals."
Dietitians say they are beginning to feel better about their image and the part they feel they will be playing in the future. They have turned to media experts to polish their public image, and although few are writing best-selling books, they are starting to go public in newspaper, radio and television interviews.
"The public has tried every fad-food diet and they're beginning to be willing to listen to the facts," Joanne Tucker said. Tucker, who spends a lot of her time working for the Heart Association, points out that more and more Americans are starting to eat right because they want to, "not because someone else has made that decision for them."
"People are realizing that calories DO count, and that long-term health depends on a sound eating pattern. The problem with fad diets is that no one can follow these for any extended length of time without serious side effects. "People are tired of losing 10 pounds only to gain them back, along with a few more, once they go off a popular weight-loss diet." Tucker and her colleagues want the public to understand that no food need be eliminated from the diet to achieve permanent weight loss.
"When I give talks to groups, I basically tell them that eating correctly is very simple there is no big secret," Tucker said. Justyn agreed: "If you eliminate a favorite food from your diet, then the chances are good that you won't keep any significant weight loss off. If pizza or apple pie is a favorite, keep it in your diet. Only understand the calories and nutritional value involved and work it into your food lifestyle."
Both agree that the reason most diets fail is that people don't have a good working knowledge of the fuel (calories) they put in their bodies. It is, they say, like trying to spell words without first learning the
