Proactive Health Care Positive Trend, With Dietetic Guidance

The three articles in this issue point to the significant extent to which soy-foods have now entered the mainstream food market and paint a bright future for the outlook ahead. The market is driven by both the favorable attitudes toward soyfoods and isoflavones, and by the general trend for consumers to be proactive about their health and to use food and dietary supplements for disease prevention and treatment.

As Dr. Elizabeth Sloan indicated in her article on page 2, Americans are increasingly turning toward self-diagnosis and self-treatment for common health conditions. This trend is likely to become even more pronounced as industry caters to consumer desires. Concerns about the costs of traditional medical care may further accelerate this trend toward self-reliance. Thus, increasingly, it appears consumers will follow Hippocrates’ advice to let “food be thine medicine.” But while being proactive about health is an attribute all health professionals encourage, the trend toward self-reliance is not. Consumers may acknowledge the importance of diet, but also their confusion about this subject. Even simply reading food labels is a challenge for many. Furthermore, most consumers get their nutrition information from the media and many specifically rely upon industry information. When decisions about diet are made by individuals whose backgrounds don’t allow them to discriminate between well-advised and illadvised information, undesirable results are likely to follow. Consequently, it is more important than ever for the dietetic community to not only establish themselves as the authority on nutrition, but to convince the public to seek the opinion of appropriately credentialed nutrition professionals.

Unfortunately, as health care professionals recognize all too well, accurate nutrition information is generally less “sexy” and appealing than the messages commonly communicated in the media, particularly popular books. Gaining the confidence and attention of the public given these circumstances poses a difficult challenge for the dietetic community, but one which must be met for the good of both parties.

There is also a challenge for health care professionals in regard to the new world of soyfoods. Consumers no longer wonder what to do with tofu when first contemplating incorporating soy into their diet. Meal replacement beverages and powders, and energy bars, are the two top selling categories of soy products. Health care professionals no longer simply have to know where their clients can find soy products and how they should prepare them. Rather, they need to be able to provide guidance about which specific products may be most appropriate for their clients. Of course, the opinion of this author is that any soy is better than none. But we don’t want consumers to choose “soy” products that contain nutritionally insignificant amounts of soy in the same way that high-fat, calorically dense muffins with two to three grains of oats sprinkled on top were gobbled up by the public during the oat bran craze in the mid- 1980s.

There is little question that soy energy bars have provided an attractive means for soy consumption by fast-paced, cooking-challenged Americans. And when substituted for traditional candy bars, soy energy bars offer a huge nutritional advantage. But when energy bars are used as substitutes for a healthy breakfast, the advantages are less clear. Similarly, soynuts and soynut butter are excellent products enjoyed by many, especially those with allergies to peanuts. But nuts are gaining a reputation for their cardiovascular disease benefits. Substituting soynuts for potato chips or other conventional snacks is clearly beneficial, substituting soynuts for peanuts or tree nuts is less so. While all among the wide array of soy products on the market may have something to offer, these foods can differ greatly in terms of their soy protein and isoflavone content (especially now that isoflavones are used as food fortificants) and overall nutritional profile. The goal of this newsletter is to provide health care professionals with the information necessary to best identify your clients’ needs regarding soy.