Food Intake Patterns

Food consumption patterns, including cooking practices and eating behaviors, are a set of norms, rules, and principles that population groups have established to provide nourishment, healing, and comfort to them. Examination of food consumption patterns, instead of intakes of single nutrients, gives a better idea of the relationships between diet, health, and disease patterns affecting population groups. In fact, people do not eat single, isolated nutrients nor do nutrients exert their effects in health status in a vacuum. On the contrary, people eat foods in the most complex and intriguing combinations, with several nutrients and other food compounds acting either synergistically or antagonistically. Therefore, to decipher the dietary effects on health, it makes sense to study foods as they are consumed instead of focusing in single nutrients.

Food patterns based on low-fat, nutrient-dense foods, particularly fruit and vegetables, have beneficial effects on cardiovascular health, protect against certain cancers, and are associated with healthier body weights. In the opposite direction, food patterns of poor diversity and those that include foods high in energy and poor nutrient density are associated with cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, certain cancers, and obesity.

Food patterns develop slowly, with the input of several factors associated with the physical environment and food availability. They are highly determined by cultural influences, as people construct their preferences, choices, perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes about foods on the basis of their ethnic and cultural values. Such cultural constructs are not always consistent with scientific knowledge regarding the safety or nutritional values of foods. Based upon the constructs of their specific cultures, different foods may be considered preferable and acceptable by some groups, but rejected and unacceptable by others. However, food [Page 292]patterns are composed of dynamic constructs that are modulated and redefined as result of the interaction of people from different cultures and ethnicities.

How people eat is complicated, making the picture of an individual's pattern of food intake difficult to decipher.

Food choices affect health and well being, although these are not necessarily influential in such decisions. Social, cultural, and economic considerations are often decisive when selecting what to put on the table. It is notorious how the American population, since colonial times, has tested, improved, and adopted several foodstuffs, which are now integral elements of its eating patterns. A classic example is the food pattern defined to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday—foods and meals incorporated into this celebration play important social, cultural, and emotional roles intrinsic in the American cultural identity. The food patterns followed by populations from the Mediterranean region, and known as the Mediterranean diet, developed slowly during centuries and became inserted into the lifestyles of these populations; such diet is associated with greater longevity and reduced mortality and morbidity for cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, and other nutrition-related diseases.

The easy and inexpensive access to food and the fluidity associated with the globalization of the food markets, along with several other factors influencing food choices, have brought profound changes in eating patterns of the population, including more diverse combination of foods, frequent snacking, and larger portion sizes. These changes in eating patterns, plus the perceived decreases in levels of physical activity, are associated with the epidemic of overweight and obesity that currently affect Americans. Efforts to promote better diets among the American population need to aim at the maintenance or adoption of healthful dietary patterns based on both cultural and modern foods that could satisfy the biological, emotional, and social needs of this population. In particular, efforts should be concentrated in guiding the population to adopt food patterns aimed at restoring or maintaining healthy body weights as more and better strategies are needed to halt or alleviate the current epidemic of obesity.

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