Better Understanding of Eating Pattern for Better Understanding of Human Nutrition

摘要

For our understanding of relations between nutrition and health methods of nutritional epidemiology are critically important. Only this research area provides direct information on the relations between the effects of food habits and health in free-living human populations. Such studies are particularly important for our understanding of the lifestyle-related diseases, which are common in modern civilised societies. The challenge for such kind of nutrition research is remarkable, since it is an immense field, which had to be observed and investigated. Nutrition influences the whole course of human live. There are effects from the very start of a new life, the conception, pregnancy and lactation, till the end of it. Nutrition effects longevity and influences future generations. Tremendous amount of food pass human organism during a life cycle; an individual may ingest almost 100 tons. The kind and number of substances in foods vary with time. Nutritional scientists were able to find out the essential and beneficial substances in this bulk of materials, but also harmful ones were detected. All these enter the metabolic pathways of different humans living in different environments (biodiversity and adaptation). The object of nutritional studies is more then multidimensional, it is apparently "ultradimensional". In the history of human evolution food insecurity was prevalent, including nutrient deficiencies. In the process of civilisation many succeed to have a surplus of food and no need for physical work and the new lifestyle related diseases emerged. Their pathogenesis are not related to one cause concepts, multifactor-ial models were applied in nutritional epidemiology. Considering investigations applying models which represent all important factors and their different interrelations seem to surmount all research capacities, even considering the improvements in information technology. This complexity can lead to a feeling of the impossibility to explore the universe of human nutrition. The aim of this contribution is to explain a strategy to approach the task.