Part Of Healthy Diet Could Include Soy, For Which FDA Recently Approved Health Claim

GAINESVILLE -- Instead of vowing to lose weight in the next millennium, a University of Florida nutrition specialist says a better resolution to make at midnight Friday is to promise to treat yourself to a healthier diet.

Linda Bobroff, an associate professor of food and nutrition with UF's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, said most people will fail to keep a resolution to lose weight because they set unrealistic goals, want to lose weight fast and don't make permanent changes in their lifestyle.

"I would hope that people would resolve to live a healthy lifestyle, exercise more if they are not exercising and eat a healthy diet. Those are good resolutions," Bobroff said. "The losing weight resolution is often a source of great frustration for people, so I would go for the healthy lifestyle. This is something people can control."

Bobroff said anyone planning to make lifestyle changes should go slowly and not try to do too much too quickly right after the holidays. Someone who has been sedentary should not expect to be able to go out and run a marathon and similarly, she said diet changes should be made slowly.

"People should think about starting off slowly, incorporating new foods and maybe cutting down on some of the foods that are not so positive," Bobroff said.

Bobroff said a new food people should consider incorporating into their diets is soy, a good source of protein that is rich in vitamins and minerals. And she said that when combined with a low fat, low cholesterol diet, soy has been found to help reduce the risk of coronary heart disease -- the leading killer of both men and women in the United States.

The evidence supporting soy's protective role is so strong that the Food and Drug Administration recently ruled manufacturers of foods containi
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Contact: Linda Bobroff
lebn@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu
352-392-1895
University of Florida
3-Jan-2000