Nutritional Youth

The national Association of Ukrainian Manufacturers of Gerontologically Significant Products has proposed a new way to rate food quality by applying a method in which the nutritious content of products, and not the allowable content of contaminants, is the key criterion. Wholesome products ensure a full-blown healthy life for people of all ages. The association’s members, who have developed this new method, have patented a technique for rating the gerontological quality and value of food products, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. They suggest that we should seriously reflect on the problem of slowing down the ageing process from infancy. According to them, a gerontologically valuable product does not harm a single cell in the human body and maintains its good condition throughout life. The association’s members hope that our stores will soon be stocking special shelves with these kinds of products, perhaps even with scales that indicate the nutrition level of every food item. They are also proposing special labels that can be easily read by people with poor eyesight. As a rule, our product content labels cannot be deciphered without a magnifying glass. Furthermore, these labels rarely provide a comprehensive description of a given product, and only specialists can understand the meaning of individual figures.

Take water, for example. Most Ukrainians buy mineral water. Tetiana Solntseva, candidate of medicine and lecturer at O. Bohomolets National Medical University, says, “Healthy people need only plain water, that is, water with a low mineral content that does not exceed five milligrams of minerals per liter. This is what is known as table water. Meanwhile, water with a high mineral content is therapeutic. It can be consumed only with a prescription. If it is consumed in large quantities, it can result in illness. There is no ‘therapeutic table water’ in principle, just as there can be no fish of second-rate freshness.”

How does youth depend on the quality of water? For starters, cells in a newborn are 85% water (95% in embryos). As we age, the water content in our cells shrinks to 50%. Healthful water does not contain contaminants and promotes normal metabolism. This is why everyone should care about water quality. For food preparation, specialists recommend using tap water purified by sorbents. Small active-carbon filters may be used for this purpose. The only downside to them is that it can be tricky to determine when the filter cartridges need to be replaced. Even though manuals indicate the frequency of replacement, it is difficult to determine the level of its contamination, since the contamination level of tap water is unknown. There are a number of contaminants in our water pipes: bacterial residue, chlorine, radioactive substances, pesticides, benzene, and free chlorine. The term “potable water” means that it contains a maximum allowable level of contaminants that are toxic to the body. The members of the Association of Ukrainian Manufacturers of Gerontologically Significant Products believe that water must be described not only in terms of contaminant content, but also mostly in terms of its purity and wholesomeness for consumers. Incidentally, research suggests that people who live to a very old age consume only pure water with a low mineral content. As far as water consumption is concerned, dieticians recommend drinking a glass of warm water before sleep and after waking. They also caution against drinking water one and a half hours after or half an hour before meals. Overall, besides water that is present in foods, they recommend drinking about two liters of liquids per day. In their experiments with student volunteers, German scientists discovered that those who drank sufficient amounts of liquids displayed greater efficiency, a good mood, and a flair for creativity.

Food products can be used to prolong life according to the following principle. It is preferable to consume products that appeared on our planet in the early stages of the evolutionary process because they are more digestible. For example, fish is more digestible than fowl, while vegetables are more digestible than fish. The age of consumed products is also important. The “younger” the food, the more water it draws to the cells, i.e., it preserves our youth.

For many years Ukraine has been developing special food products that are nutritionally better suited for middle-aged people and seniors. Yury Hryhorov, M.D., chairman of the Gerontological Dietetics Laboratory at the Institute of Gerontology of the Ukrainian Academy of Medical Sciences, told The Day that for the past thirty years he has been developing the theoretical principles behind the creation and production of new and nutritious food products. “Two of our inventions were awarded the State Prize of Ukraine. However, you won’t find these products in our stores today. One of them is Gerolact. For some time it was being produced and sold in Ukraine, then it disappeared. Meanwhile, Denmark bought the exclusive rights to this product, and now it is being manufactured almost everywhere in Europe and even in Brazil. This product contains a substance present in the bodies of people who live to a ripe old age. It helps preserve the health of people who are no longer young. So far our institute has been unable to start producing this valuable food product,” says Yury Hryhorov.

Still, the Association of Manufacturers of Gerontologically Significant Products is continuing to make its unique proposals. One of them is to declare Kyiv a city where food is gerontologically monitored. They also want to remind people that Kyiv is the world’s only capital to have suffered such a large dose of radioactive contamination.