Читать книгу Nutrition For Dummies - Carol Ann Rinzler - Страница 43

What nutrients are missing from the RDA list of essentials? Carbohydrates, fiber, fat, and alcohol. The reason is simple: If your diet provides enough protein, vitamins, and minerals, it’s almost certain to provide enough carbohydrates and probably more than enough fat. Although no specific RDAs exist for carbohydrates and fat, guidelines definitely exist for them and for dietary fiber and alcohol.

In 1980, the U.S. Public Health Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture joined forces to produce the first edition of Dietary Guidelines for Americans (see Chapter 16). A new edition of the Dietary Guidelines has been issued every five years since then to set parameters for what you can consider reasonable amounts of calories, carbohydrates, dietary fiber, fats, protein, and alcohol. According to these guidelines, several general rules advise you to

 Balance your calorie intake with energy output in the form of regular exercise. Check out Chapter 5 for specifics on how many calories a person of your weight, height, and level of activity (couch potato? marathon runner?) needs to consume each day.

 Make foods with complex carbohydrates and dietary fiber (defined in Chapter 8) the base of your total daily calories. These should make up to 900 to 1,300 calories and up to 25 grams dietary fiber on a 2,000 calorie per day diet.

 Concentrate on unsaturated fats. For more specific guidelines, check out Chapters 16 and 17 and Chapter 7 for everything you need to know about the individual dietary fats.

 Drink alcohol only in moderation. That means one drink a day for a woman and two for a man. As the Guidelines note, neither is a component of the USDA Dietary Patterns.