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Diet Nutrition

In nutrition, diet is the sum of food consumed by a person or other organism.[1] Dietary habits are the habitual decisions an individual or culture makes when choosing what foods to eat. With the word diet, it is often implied the use of specific intake of nutrition for health or weight-management reasons (with the two often being related). Although humans are omnivores, each culture and each person holds some food preferences or some food taboos, due to personal tastes or ethical reasons. Individual dietary choices may be more or less healthful. Proper nutrition requires the proper ingestion and, equally important, the absorption of vitamins, minerals, and food energy in the form of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Dietary habits and choices play a significant role in health and mortality, and can also define cultures and play a role in religion.

Traditional Diets

Traditional diets are those of native populations such as the Native Americans, Khoisan or Australian Aborigines. Often, to qualify for cultural cuisine, traditional diets include more organic farming and seasonal food according to food origins..

Traditional diets vary with availability of local resources, such as fish in coastal towns, eels and eggs in estuary settlements, or squash, corn and beans in farming towns, as well as with cultural and religious customs and taboos. In some cases, the crops and domestic animals that characterize a traditional diet have been replaced by modern high-yield crops, and are no longer available.[2] The slow food movement attempts to counter this trend and to preserve traditional diets.

A recent study has suggested that traditional diets may have been more balanced than first thought. New research indicates grains were part of the diet of ancient people in Italy, Russia and the Czech Republic.[3]