As a special analysis conducted in various countries shows, sufficient food production alone does not ensure the maintenance of human health at an optimal level. A high nutritional culture is necessary.
There is clear evidence of the influence of food and nutrition on many important biological characteristics of the body, in particular on life expectancy, aging, and the time of optimal functioning of its physiological systems.
Optimization of nutrition is a problem that requires a general solution. It seems especially important because nutritional deficiencies are characteristic of the present time on a global scale.
The theory of adequate nutrition attaches great importance to the body's defense systems against the penetration of various harmful substances into its internal environment. The entry of nutrients into the gastrointestinal tract should be considered not only as a way to replenish energy and plastic materials, but also as an allergic and toxic aggression.
From the standpoint of the theory of adequate nutrition, elemental diets are defective for many reasons, and in particular because they disrupt the properties and ratio of nutritional (trophic) and toxic flows due to the loss of protective functions of membrane digestion and changes in endoecology.
According to the theory of balanced nutrition, the colonization of the digestive tract of higher organisms by bacterial flora is an undesirable and to some extent harmful side effect.
A prerequisite for the assimilation of food is the disassembly of its complex structures into simple compounds, which occurs during the digestion process.
In order to understand the differences between the two theories and the reasons why the classical theory is becoming an important element of a more general theory of adequate nutrition, it is necessary to characterize the main provisions, theoretical consequences and practical recommendations of the new theory and compare them with the classical one.
The theory of balanced nutrition is distinguished by the rigor and consistency of its axiomatics. It underlies all modern nutrition concepts and has allowed for a scientific explanation of food needs for energy, plastic and other components.
One of the ideas that is a consequence of the theory of balanced nutrition is the creation of ideal food and ideal nutrition. At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, the basic concept concerning the improvement of food and nutrition emerged.
