Nutrition — The Seven Basic Foods

Miss Nuha Salman is a specialist in "nutrition" from Beirut College for Women, and The Woman's Voice is pleased to present her in a series beginning today, in which she will treat, in turn, the importance of the nourishing elements in food: energy, protein, minerals, and vitamins. She will then take up the effect of cooking on the nutritive elements, and turn finally to Lebanese food in particular and its nutritive value...

The seven basic foods are the foundation of health and growth in every individual.

Nutrition is a new field of study, developed during the last quarter of the twentieth century, when scientists and researchers awoke to the many diseases threatening the existence of mankind and to the spread of malnutrition. After great and sustained efforts they widened the field of nutrition and enrolled it among the applied sciences. In this age of ours, health is considered one of the principal measures of a people's cultural level. And health is nothing but the fruit of good nutrition, so great is its importance for the individual's growth and development, the health of his body, his mental activity and intelligence, the lengthening and gladdening of life, resistance to diseases, and the acquiring of immunity against them; it also prevents the retarding of growth and the coming of old age.

Food is the sole source that supplies the nutritional requirements — energy, protein, mineral salts, and vitamins. And since the foods available to man are many and varied, choosing among them has become a difficult and complicated matter. The nutrition experts therefore decided that the only way to solve this problem is to divide the foods into seven basic groups. This is simply a dietary arrangement that helps the housewife supply the family with sufficient provision of food. The classification reveals the principal kinds of food and guides one to the choice of a balanced diet, wisely distributed over three meals a day, so that every member of the family is furnished with the nourishing elements needed to maintain his health and activity. As one nutrition scientist has said: the seven basic foods are the foundation of health and growth in every individual...

Children should be given regularly no less than 3/4 of a liter of milk daily. Adults are advised to take half a liter or more daily. As for the nursing or expectant mother, she needs a liter or more daily. Part of this daily need can be obtained by taking sweets, ices, laban, labneh, or cheese. All milk products are an excellent source of the calcium and phosphorus which children need for their growth.

At least one serving daily of some of the foods mentioned in this group is indispensable. Every member of the family should eat no fewer than four eggs a week. Legumes are the cheapest of the foods in which protein is plentiful; their use should therefore be encouraged among those whose financial circumstances do not allow them to buy meat and the other protein foods.

Everyone is advised to take three or more servings daily from this group. Brown bread made from whole wheat is very nourishing, for it contains food elements not found in any kind of white flour, above all the vitamin B complex. Boiled wheat — that is, burghul — is scarcely known outside the Middle East, and it contains all the elements that make it a complete and nourishing food.

The estimation of the quantities our food should contain is left to the individual's taste and to his need according to his activity. Butter is rich in vitamin A, but the other fatty foods are not nourishing and do not equal what butter gives. The animal ghee used in the Arab countries is very rich in vitamin A, but the fact that it is not refined makes it hard to digest and consequently harmful.