Sometimes the best advice is also the most simple, according to a top official at Iowa State University. Catherine Woteki, Dean of I-S-U’s College of Agriculture, says it’s not a big shocker, but after all the research that’s been done and all we’ve learned, people just need to eat more sensibly to live healthier lives. Diets low in fat and saturated fat are health-promoting, as are diets high in fruits and vegetables. Woteki says “We need to make some fundamental changes in the way that we Americans are eating to promote good health and to defer as long as possible the onset of chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer.” She admits she’s far from going out on a limb in making the recommendations. She says it’s really quite a surprise that after all the effort and all of the studying of what’s in food and how it affects health that the best advice that can be given is still to eat a diet that’s low in fats and high in fruits and vegetables. Woteki sits on the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Institutes of Health’s Institute of Medicine. She says there are many ways in which the food industry itself could make the selection of foods more health-promoting. Processing food differently can take out some of the undesirable things like saturated fats while biotechnologies can engineer into plant foods some of the more desirable things. Woteki spoke on the health-promoting diet at a recent Denver meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
