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Public Health Implications of Preventive Nutrition

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Preventive Nutrition

Part of the book series: Nutrition ◊ and ◊ Health ((NH))

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Abstract

The recent debate about health care reform has focused largely on issues of equal access, cost containment, and delivery of primary care with some minor appreciation of the need for continued support for research and development. The central paradigm of this discussion is universal coverage and ways to finance it. Largely absent from consideration is the recognition that public health policies must drastically reduce the current disease-oriented treatment approach by encouraging significant changes in provider and consumer attitudes toward health promotion and health maintenance. Abundant evidence indicates that a health care system with a goal of promoting health and preventing illness will cost less than the present system, which basically operates to respond to the presence of illness with expensive diagnostic and therapeutic interventions. Consensus reports, like those from the US Surgeon General and National Research Council, clearly support the notion of preventive nutrition: that the most important choice people can make to influence their long-term health prospects is the choice of diet (1–3). Importantly, the modalities of this choice extend beyond a knowledgeable selection of food items and include nutrient enrichment, fortification, supplementation, and most recently, the potential of functional foods (4).

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Authors
  1. Jeffrey B. Blumberg
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. SmithKline Beecham Consumer Health Care, Parsippany, NJ, USA

    Adrianne Bendich PhD

  2. Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Richard J. Deckelbaum MD

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Blumberg, J.B. (1997). Public Health Implications of Preventive Nutrition. In: Bendich, A., Deckelbaum, R.J. (eds) Preventive Nutrition. Nutrition ◊ and ◊ Health. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6242-6_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6242-6_1

  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, Totowa, NJ

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-6244-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-6242-6

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