Modern science affirms ancient diets: how the dietary guidelines from the Old and New Testaments can make you healthier today.

Opening the Science of Food panel discussion before science and medical writers at the American Association for the Advancement of Science just prior to Thanksgiving 2002, nutrition and food science researcher/professor, emeritus at the University of Maryland Richard Ahrens, Ph.D., a registered dietitian, began by citing chapter 11 in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, which forbids the eating of pork, thus preventing trichinosis and other diseases.

Coincidentally, this vegetarian author selected for her premedical school microbiology research project finding out why the ancient Israelites salted their food. She also found that they followed the book of Leviticus nearly 4000 years ago. Did they know to salt food as a means of preservation, or did they understand the chemical effects of moisture and salt content and how different microorganisms grow at varying levels of salt concentration?

Today salt is vital to food preservation as an antiseptic to control and inhibit microbial population in such foods as bread, butter, cheese, and certain vegetables. Microorganisms must have their nutrients in a water solution, and salt can inhibit bacterial growth that causes foodborne illness, such as salmonella, E. coil, and molds.

Plant Food Benefits Over the Centuries

In the March 22, 2001, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, a Greek physician reviewed a book about the origins and myths of the Mediterranean diet. Ancient civilizations began using olive oil to enhance raw or cooked vegetables, legumes, wild greens, and cereals. This book also suggests keeping dietary fats to within 30 percent of your energy intake.

Biological anthropologist Fatima Jackson, Ph.D., of the University of Maryland, said at the Science of Food pre-Thanksgiving panel, "Plants consumed by man have metabolic influences on our health." She compared humans with animals, saying, "If we look at animals who eat plants for medicinal properties, we learn about the food-medicine continuum."

This researcher also said plant foods promote good health and contain phytochemicals. Their popularity is increasing, as phytochemicals (also called phytonutrients) protect our bodies from cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and many degenerative diseases.

Examples of summer foods rich in phytonutrients are in these colors: orange--peaches, cantaloupes, tropical mangoes and papayas, and carrots; red--strawberries, raspberries, and tomatoes; and green--parsley and green peppers. Even the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, calls fruits and vegetables the original fast food.

Phytochemicals are currently being studied at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, Maryland. Science of Food panelist Ahrens was a research physiologist in the USDA's Human Nutrition Research Center. It is anticipated that this research will result in a "list of beneficial nutrients in the near future," predicts Ahrens. "We already know that the lycopenes in tomatoes protect against prostate cancer, and allicin [a thiosulfate] in garlic protects against cardiovascular disease," he adds.

Understanding Food Pyramids and Food Labels

In 1992 the USDA's Human Nutrition Information Service suggested in its food guide pyramid to eat two to four servings in the fruit group and three to five in the vegetable group. Additionally, the 44-page USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans suggests using plant foods as the foundation for meals and being physically active daily.

The 5 a Day for Better Health Program, begun in 1991, is currently promoted by the USDA, the National Institutes of Health's National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Cancer Society, the United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Association, and other organizations. This is the largest public/private partnership for nutrition education, providing information about how to include more fruits and vegetables in daily eating patterns.

A three-a-day dairy education program, which began in February 2003, is designed to help address the nation's calcium deficit by presenting the importance of three servings daily of milk, cheese, and yogurt to provide necessary calcium for stronger bones and bodies. It is consistent with the USDA's Food Guide Pyramid and is supported by the the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Dietetic Association, and others. Low-fat and fat-free dairy products will be among others to display the three-a-day food labels.

October 2002 marked the USDA's new federal standards to label the organic content in foods. The four categories range from less than 70 percent to 100 percent organic. Many vegetarian-friendly grocery stores have printed information to help consumers distinguish among the different categories.

The USDA began a vegetarian-friendly pilot program consisting of providing 65,000 students (from elementary school to high school) in five states with healthy snacks at school. Twice daily the choices include baby carrots, strawberries, raisins, apples, cantaloupe, honeydew, fruit smoothies, and broccoli. And their popularity is rapidly reducing the number of junk foods selected, with the ultimate hope that this will reduce childhood obesity and the subsequent cardiovascular disease and diabetes occurring at alarming rates in these young folks.

Just prior to fall 2002, the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine's Food and Nutrition Board, headquartered in Washington, D.C., replaced the 60-year-old Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) with the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI). Some food manufacturers already have begun to use the new DRI labels on their products.

Two key areas of these guidelines emphasize how to minimize the risk of chronic disease and how to meet the daily energy requirements for both children and adults. These DRI guidelines additionally correlate the number of calories one needs based on a sedentary or active lifestyle and the person's height and weight.

The DRIs update the most recent RDAs, which were done in 1989, and double the 1996 surgeon general's recommended exercise activity from 30 minutes every day to at least one hour in small increments.

Certain fats, such as the polyunsaturated omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids found in vegetable oils, are recommended; in the DRIs. These include safflower, corn, and flaxseed oils. Dietary functional fiber intake from cereal bran, sweet potatoes, and legumes is recommended; and, for the first time, so are all nine of the essential amino acids found in dietary protein.

Among health and nutritional entities that have developed their own pyramids is the Rochester, Minnesota, Mayo Clinic. Its physicians and dietitians used research and patient-care experience to develop a healthy weight pyramid that emphasizes unlimited vegetables and fruits, and puts exercise in the center of the pyramid. The Mediterranean diet pyramid strongly emphasizes daily physical activity at its base, as well as daily intake of fruits, vegetables, beans, legumes, nuts, and whole grains. The developers of these vegetarian-friendly healthy weight pyramids claim they encourage weight loss, maintenance, and long-term health.

Prestigious Harvard University's School of Public Health's Walter Willett has an alternative healthy eating pyramid. He promotes whole grains being eaten at most meals. And University of California's Center for Human Nutrition's director, David Heber, M.D., Ph.D., developed a California cuisine food pyramid. He advises seven to 11 phytonutrient-rich vegetables and fruits daily as the base, followed by intake of six to 11 servings of high-fiber grains and other vegetables per day. Between 50 and 90 grams daily of protein-rich foods, such as tofu/soybeans, beans, and other legumes should be eaten daily, as well.

Vitamins' Role

In 1913 Elmer Verner McCollum, Ph.D., at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, discovered the first fat-soluble vitamin. "He found that insufficient amounts of vitamin A cause anemia, for example, but with proper intake by taking the vitamin's extract from yellow corn and moving it to white corn, could enhance the nutritive value," Ahrens cited. In 1948, when vitamin B12 was discovered, it completed today's eight B vitamins, four fat-soluble vitamins, and vitamin C.

The amino acid components of proteins, which are the body's building blocks, play an integral role in energy and health. We now know that little pieces of peptides provide better absorption of proteins.

Genetics' Role in Food Metabolism

Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk who began studying common garden peas in the mid-1800s with the intention of cross-fertilizing them to observe their traits and to create hybrids, is credited with being the father of genetics. By the following autumn Mendel saw his F2 generation and understood the difference between round and angular peas, and defined dominant and recessive genes. Mendel's F1 hybrid vegetable was an all-yellow pea.

Today, some 150 years later, we understand that the "food we eat has the ability to turn on certain genes to promote good health," according to University of Maryland researcher Jackson. This is accomplished by four major bioactive compounds, as Jackson explains: "These are glucosides, alkaloids, phenolics, and unusual proteins, and amino acids."

Our bodies cannot synthesize vitamin C, and therefore we need to ingest it. She pointed out that some people have a dysfunctional gene for this vitamin, which is an integral part of the major antioxidants: vitamins A, C, and E, and the mineral selenium. "The family history of our ancestors sets the precedent for which genes are turned on to allow us to function optimally," Jackson said. Then she spoke about a mainstay of many vegetarian diets--soy products, from soybeans to tofu to "mock" poultry and meat. "For example, American women who ingest soy obtain less benefits as a breast cancer protector than Asian women." This cultural difference has a "definite genetic basis, which emphasizes the impact of the genetic influence from very early generations," she concluded.

Vegetarian Food Pyramid

1 Vegetable fats and oils, sweets, and salt Eat sparingly.

2 Low-fat or non-fat milk, yogurt, fresh cheese, and fortified alternative group 2-3 servings Eat moderately.

3 Legumes, nuts, seeds, and meat alternative group 2-3 servings Eat moderately.

4 Vegetable group 3-5 servings Eat generously.

5 Fruit group 2-3 servings Eat generously.

6 Whole-grain bread, cereal, pasta, and rice group 6-11 servings Eat liberally.

When she was 30 years old, premedical student in the mid-1970s, Barbara Anan Kogan, O.D., already a degreed journalist for a number of years, selected to research how to kill microorganisms in foods by using salt. Since the mid-1980s she has studied nutrition postdoctorally, lectured, appeared on a PBS radio program, written about it for health-care professionals and the public, and referred her optometric patients for nutrition consultations during her 13 years as a downtown Washington, D.C., practitioner. She has been a lactovegetarian since 1993 and loves the creativity of cooking for taste and good health. For the past four years she has been a healthy food activist for her Washington, D.C., Advisory Neighborhood Commission, and has frequently presented up-to-date issues and news at these public meetings, which are held at the Capital Memorial Seventh-day Adventist Church.