diet health scale

There has never been a standard answer to the diet health scale that is universal across the Internet. All currently public standardized scales on the market can only be used as a universal reference. A diet health scoring system that is truly suitable for individuals must combine their own basic diseases, exercise habits, food tolerance and even dietary preferences. Directly copying the unified scale for scoring may lead to health pitfalls.

Not long ago, I met a 62-year-old Aunt Zhang in the nutrition clinic. She angrily took the "National Diet Health Self-Assessment Form" saved in her mobile phone and asked her. She said that she eats according to the requirements on the form every day, 200g of fruit, 300g of pure milk, less oil and less salt, and she scored 90 points. Why has her fasting blood sugar recently risen to 7.2? I took a look at the table and saw that what she had saved was a generic version for ordinary healthy adults. She did not consider that she had a 3-year history of type 2 diabetes. The 200g of fruits recommended on the table also included watermelon and grapes, which raise blood sugar quickly. She had to eat a small plate every afternoon, so it would be strange if her blood sugar did not rise.

In fact, we can’t blame the aunt for believing it wrong. The formal universal diet health scale itself is supported by hard scientific research. For example, the self-measurement form accompanying the 2022 Dietary Guidelines of the Chinese Nutrition Society is a baseline based on the dietary intake data and chronic disease risks of hundreds of thousands of domestic residents. For most healthy adults without special needs, a score of 70 or 80 can basically avoid the common pitfalls of high oil, high salt, and insufficient micronutrients. When I first entered the industry, I also regarded this table as an imperial edict. Every time I evaluated a client, I would take out the table to calculate the scores and give suggestions based on the grams. It was not until I met a girl who was allergic to broccoli that I realized that there was no universally applicable standard.

There has been a lot of controversy in the academic community about the universality of the scale. The traditional Dietary Guidelines believe that the universal scale is the bottom line. Ordinary people should first meet the standard and then talk about personalization. Otherwise, they will not be able to eat enough vegetables every day, and any adjustments they make will be in vain. ； The functional medicine school has a more detailed view. They feel that the universal scale is too broad and must take into account individual food intolerances, intestinal flora status, and underlying diseases. For example, for people who are also lactose intolerant, if you drink 300g of ordinary pure milk every day according to the scale, you will only be unable to straighten your waist. Instead, it is better to switch to low-lactose milk or yogurt, and change the scoring criteria for this item. ； Nowadays, the metabolic flexibility school, which is more popular, believes that the values ​​on the scale do not need to be so stuck at all. If you go to the gym and run a marathon every day this week, eat more carbohydrates. If you lie down at home and work overtime this week, you should use less refined sugar. There is no need to count grams every day. Making people anxious about eating will induce eating disorders, which is not worth the loss.

To be honest, many of the so-called "diet health scales" that are being circulated on the Internet are essentially traffic codes. A mouthful of hot pot will be deducted by 10 points, and a cup of milk tea will be deducted by 20 points. They purely create anxiety and do not even mention the most basic concept of food exchange. They are not serious evaluation tools at all. When I help users adjust their personalized scales, I first use the official universal scale as a base, and then change the threshold addition and subtraction items little by little: For example, the fitness guy who came to me last week does strength training six times a week, and the universal scale requires 250 carbohydrates a day. -300g. He needs to eat 400g to maintain training status, so I directly adjusted the upper limit of carbohydrates to 450g. Originally, his score according to the general scale was only 62 points. After the adjustment, it went directly to 87. His body fat rate, muscle mass, and blood lipid indicators were all normal. ； There is also a girl with irritable bowel syndrome. The universal scale requires eating 300g of whole grains every day, but she is bloated and unable to sleep when eating oats and barley. I changed the whole grain options to low-FODMAP millet, quinoa, and peeled brown rice. She ate according to the adjusted scale for half a month. Not only did her score go up, but she no longer needs to carry antidiarrheal medicine with her when she goes out.

Oh, by the way, there is another point that many people overlook: the "healthy foods" in the scale are not healthy for everyone. For example, does kale qualify as a top-rated healthy food? I once had a client with Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Eating too much cruciferous food will affect thyroxine synthesis. In this case, you can't find the corresponding adjustment item in the universal scale, so you can only manually change the weight of this type of food.

If we use clothes as an analogy, a universal diet and health scale is like a one-size-fits-all T-shirt sold in a shopping mall. Anyone with a normal height and weight can put it on and wear it, but if you have particularly broad shoulders, a very tall height, or like to wear loose-fitting styles, it will definitely be uncomfortable to force one-size-fits-all T-shirts on. Ordinary people should not be too rigid when using the scale. First, use the official official version to get a rough baseline of health, and then adjust it according to your body's reaction: if you have gout, increase the deduction weight for high-purine foods. If you are lactose intolerant, cross out ordinary milk from the recommended items and replace it with yogurt. If you really like spicy food, drink a cup of milk tea. If you eat it once or twice a week, you don’t have to deduct more than a dozen points - after all, the core of a healthy diet is to make your body comfortable. If you use a scale to calculate every day, you have to convert grams to calculate the score to eat a strawberry, which will defeat the original intention.