What good nutrition means to you

Nation's Business, Jan, 1992 by Phyllis M. Barrier

Five of the 10 leading causes of death and disease are associated with what we eat, and men have been especially vulnerable to such diet-related killers as heart disease, stroke, and colon cancer. Even so, men have typically shown less concern than women about their diets. Now, though, many men are starting to realize that what they eat can directly affect their health and performance--at home, at work, and on the playing field.

Nolan Ryan the 44-year-old pitcher for the Texas Rangers, made history in the 1991 baseball season by pitching his seventh career no-hitter. Ryan is keenly aware of how diet affects performance. "The aging process hasn't affected me as much as it has some other players," he said a few months ago concerning his exceptionally long career in professional sports. "I pay very close attention to my diet and feel it's one of the factors that has lent to my longevity."

As Ryan says, "The older you get, [the more] your metabolism slows down, and it's harder to lose weight and maintain your weight--so you have to pay particular attention to your diet."

What goes for athletes applies to business people, too. Mark Gallivan, 40, of Laurel, Md., a regional sales manager for a large corporation, says good nutrition at home helps him keep up his stamina when he's working long hours and spending days at a time on the road.

"The well-balanced meals we have at home make the difference," he says. "We eat a wide variety of foods representing the four food groups and emphasizing low-fat choices. There's the added incentive of knowing that our meals set a good example for our 8-year-old daughter, Megan." When he travels, Gallivan tries to order meals that follow the same principles he follows at home.

Gallivan does enjoy one advantage that many men don't: His wife, Joane, is a registered dietitian. But it's not unusual for men to show an increasing concern for good nutrition as they enter their middle years, and it seems likely that nutrition awareness will grow as the baby boomers age. The problem is to match that growing awareness with useful knowledge about which steps really make sense in dietary terms.

The American Dietetic Association (ADA), the world's largest group of food and nutrition professionals, says that men's concern about nutrition peaks in their 50s and early 60s. A recent ADA study of 500 men ages 18 and older found that 80 percent of men between 50 and 64 said they viewed nutrition as a "top priority," compared with only 58 percent of the younger men surveyed.

Forty-four percent of all the men surveyed cited health maintenance and disease prevention as the most important reasons for eating right. Twenty percent listed physical fitness, and 12 percent stressed weight control. Only small percentages mentioned immediate benefits--improved energy and mental alertness, or better performance and productivity--as key reasons for eating right.

"If men tie nutrition primarily to long-term health and disease prevention, it's not surprising that older men place greater emphasis on healthy eating habits than younger men," says Mary Abbott Hess, president of ADA. "A man in his 20s doesn't want to think about his risk of having a heart attack someday."

If a good diet's benefits seem to exist only in the longer term, a young man may be tempted to put off making changes in what he eats. Although the vast majority (82 percent) of all men surveyed said they were at least "fairly" concerned about nutrition, just over half reported altering their diets as a result of their concern.

A younger man might decide to pay more attention to his diet, Hess says, "if he knows it can affect his productivity, stamina, mental and physical fitness today," not just in what may seem like the distant future.

Another obstacle to improved diets may be that many men think that eating better involves mainly giving up things. Of those men in the survey who had made changes in their diets, the largest group (30 percent) said they were reducing their intake of fat or cholesterol. "When men choose to change their diets, most eat less of what they perceive as harmful, rather than more of something healthful," Hess says. "The survey shows only 8 percent said they're eating more vegetables, and only 4 percent mentioned more fruit."

That lack of positive action may reflect a shortage of information--men may not be sure of what they should do. Although men ages 50 to 64 expressed the most concern about nutrition, they were the least likely to express confidence in their nutrition knowledge compared with women's. Only one-quarter of this group said they were more informed about nutrition than the "most significant women in their lives," while 45 percent of those 18 to 24 who were surveyed said they knew more than women.

But help is available. Food Strategies For Men, a pamphlet published by the ADA, contains practical suggestions for lifestyle changes that can lead to better eating habits, maximized stamina, and improved long-term health. In this pamphlet, the ADA recommends that men eat moderate amounts of a variety of foods, including those that are low in cholesterol, fat, sugar, and sodium, and high in fiber.