Nutrition and physical activity

Nutrition and physical activity

Nutrition and physical activity

Recommendation for community action

Social, economic, and cultural factors strongly influence individual choices about diet and physical activity. While most people would like to adopt a healthful lifestyle, many encounter substantial barriers that make it difficult to follow diet and activity. Toward increasing consumption of high calorie convenience foods and restaurant meals, and declining levels of physical activity are contributing to an alarming epidemic of obesity among longer workdays and more households with multiple wage earners reduce the amount of time available for preparation of meals, with a resulting shift toward increased consumption of food outside the home- often processed foods, fast foods, and snack foods. Reduced leisure time, increased reliance on automobile for transportation, and increased availability of electronic entertainment and communications media all contribute to a less active and increasingly sedentary lifestyle. These trends are of particular concern, especially with regard to the adverse effects they have on the long-term health of children, who are establishing life-time patterns of diet and physical activity, as well as on the poor, who live in communities with less access to safe and healthful lifestyle options.

Facilitating improved diet and increased physical activity partners will require multiple strategies, ranging from the implementation of community and work-site health promotion programs to policies that affect community planning, transportation, school-based physical education, and food services. Particular efforts will be needed to ensure that all population groups have access to healthful food choices and opportunities for physical activity. Both public and private organizations at the local, state, and national levels will have to develop new policies and will need to raise or reallocate resources to facilitate needed changes. Health care professional, who can be especially persuasive on maters of lifestyle change, can provide leadership in promoting policy changes in their communities.

Public, private, and community organizations should work to create social and physical environments that support the adoption and maintenance of healthful nutrition and physical activity behaviours.

v  Increase access to healthful foods in schools, worksites, and communities.

v  Provide safe, enjoyable, and accessible environments for physical activity in schools, and for transportation and recreation in communities.

Nutrition and physical activity for cancer prevention

Recommendations for individual choices

Eat a variety of healthful foods, with an emphasis on plant sources

v  Eat five or more servings of a variety of vegetables and fruits each day.

v  Choose whole grains in preference to processed (refined) grains and sugars.

v  Limit consumption of red meats, especially those high in fat and processed.

Adopt a physically active lifestyle

v  Adults: engage in at least moderate activity for 30 minutes or more on five or more days of the week; 45 minutes or more of moderate-to-vigorous activity on five or more days per week may further enhance reductions in the risk of breast and colon cancer.

v  Children and adolescents: engage in at least 60 minutes per day moderate-to-vigorous physical activity at least five days per week.

Maintain a healthful weight throughout life

v  Balance caloric intake with physical activity.

v  Lose weight if currently overweight or obese.

If you drink alcoholic beverages, limit consumption.