Utilizing Dietary Micronutrient Ratios in Nutritional Research May be More Informative than Focusing on Single Nutrients

Abstract

The 2015 US dietary guidelines advise the importance of good dietary patterns for health, which includes all nutrients. Micronutrients are rarely, if ever, consumed separately, they are not tissue specific in their actions and at the molecular level they are multitaskers. Metabolism functions within a seemingly random cellular milieu however ratios are important, for example, the ratio of adenosine triphosphate to adenosine monophosphate, or oxidized to reduced glutathione. Health status is determined by simple ratios, such as the waist hip ratio, or ratio of fat mass to lean mass. Some nutrient ratios exist and remain controversial such as the omega-6/omega-3 fatty acid ratio and the sodium/potassium ratio. Therefore, examining ratios of micronutrients may convey more information about how diet and health outcomes are related. Summarized micronutrient intake data, from food only, from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, were used to generate initial ratios. Overall, in this preliminary analysis dietary ratios of micronutrients showed some differences between intakes and recommendations. Principles outlined here could be used in nutritional epidemiology and in basic nutritional research, rather than focusing on individual nutrient intakes. This paper presents the concept of micronutrient ratios to encourage change in the way nutrients are regarded.

Osteosarcopenic Obesity: Current Knowledge, Revised Identification Criteria and Treatment Principles

“…Guidelines for the management of OSO are now available [3,19,59,60,130,131,132]. One of our focus areas over the last five years was on the nutritional aspects related to OSO [3,60,131,132,133,134]. Our intention here is to compile and create preliminary treatment principles for the management of OSO.…”

“…Insufficiencies in calcium; magnesium; potassium; vitamins B 6 , B 12 , A, D, E and K; and folate, as well as excesses of sodium, phosphorus and most B vitamins (with regard to the Dietary Reference Intakes) may be contributing to OSO [131]. However, a more recent concept of nutrient ratios may better to help explain how the overall nutrient insufficiencies and excesses contribute to OSO and overall health [133,134].…”

Utilizing Dietary Nutrient Ratios in Nutritional Research: Expanding the Concept of Nutrient Ratios to Macronutrients

“…It is common and widely accepted to report dietary intake and/or nutritional status relating to some health outcomes relative to single nutrients. We have already introduced the concept of using nutrient ratios in research for the micronutrients [1], as well as presenting the overall rationale for utilizing nutrient ratios, based on the physiological and metabolic properties of nutrients. Our rationale is based on four basic and well-established principles:Meals contain an assortment of nutrients, not a single nutrient.Each meal or food item has a different assortment (ratio) of nutrients.Most of the nutrients function in various tissues and are not tissue specific [2].…”

Elemental Composition and Some Nutritional Parameters of Sweet Pepper from Organic and Conventional Agriculture

“…One may argue that the search of ideal elemental ratios is not worthwhile because there is a difference between the dietary ratio and the blood (or serum) ratio, the latter more relevant in health and disease [40]. However, the load of a particular element in a certain foodstuff may well give us an indication of balance/imbalances, without losing the focus on the interactions and bioavailability and as recently referred, the utilization of dietary micronutrient ratios in nutritional studies might well be more informative than focusing on a single nutrient [41,42].…”