Nutrition and physical activity guidelines

[Lark]

[Lark]

Janine posted a message about nutrition and excercise in another thread and gave some links, and I'm continuing that theme here in a thread devoted to links to nutrition and excercise guidelines on the internet.

It would be pretty safe to say that the basic principles of healthy diets and good excercise are now well understood by scientists, and the information is available in the form of easy to understand nutrition and physical activity guidelines on the internet and in print. If we want to get our general eating and excercise habits up to world's best practice for humans going about our everyday lives on planet Earth, we can do it using these guidelines, adjusting the information to suit our particular circumstances.

Here are some links to guidelines or sources of information on nutrition and excercise found on reliable websites. Doubtless there are many more good sources of info on the topic.

The American Cancer Society's Nutrition and Physical Activity Guidelines: a condensed version of their guidelines can be found here
www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/PED_ ... tearea=PED
and the full version can be found here
http://caonline.amcancersoc.org/cgi/con ... l/56/5/254

Their guidelines include sections called "Diet and Physical Activity Factors That Affect Risks for Select Cancers" and "Common Questions About Diet and Cancer".

Breastcancer.org has a section on nutrition, starting on this page www.breastcancer.org/nutr_intro.html

Here's a simple guide prepared for the general public by the US Department of Agriculture www.mypyramid.gov

And a simple guide prepared in Australia
www.cancerinstitute.org.au/cancer_inst/ ... onPlan.pdf

For those who wish to delve further into dietary guidelines, here are links to two detailed documents:

"Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005" (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Agriculture) www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publications/DietaryG ... cument.pdf
It's a pdf file 4 mb in size - big for dialup.

They say "The Dietary Guidelines for Americans ... , first published in 1980, provides sciencebased advice to promote health and to reduce risk for chronic diseases through diet and physical activity. The recommendations contained within the Dietary Guidelines are targeted to the general public over 2 years of age who are living in the United States. Because of its focus on health promotion and risk reduction, the Dietary Guidelines form the basis of federal food, nutrition education, and information programs."
and elsewhere "The Dietary Guidelines for Americans are the cornerstone of Federal nutrition policy and nutrition education activities. They are jointly issued and updated every 5 years by the Departments of Agriculture ... and Health and Human Services ... .

There's an Australian government National Health and Medical Research Council publication called "Dietary Guidelines for Australian Adults" at www.nhmrc.gov.au/publications/synopses/_files/n33.pdf
size 1 mb

You may find valuable information on the website of the Dietitians Association of Australia at www.daa.asn.au

My aim in this thread has been to give some links to dietary and exercise guidelines formulated for the general population. I won't attempt in this thread to delve into various related topics including:
- our diets and excercise may need to be modified in many ways when we are being treated for cancer or other ailments;
- those who feel they are at high risk of getting specific cancers or getting a recurrence of a cancer may wish to take extra care to avoid certain foods and beverages;
- for many people there is the creative challenge of exploring additions to their diet that might directly help in preventing cancer or in fighting a cancer and preventing a recurrence.