Knowledge of Nutrition Principles

Nutrition is concerned with the relationship of food and health, and
one can think of nutrition knowledge as encompassing both healthoriented
and food-related principles. Health-oriented principles (for
example, knowledge that saturated fat acts differently on cholesterol
levels than does unsaturated fat) can provide a deeper understanding
of diet-health relationships than simple awareness, thereby improving
an individual’s ability to understand and implement dietary change.
Food-related principles (for example, that saturated fat is more likely
to be solid at room temperature, whereas unsaturated fat is more likely
to be liquid) also facilitate dietary improvement by providing relatively
simple “decision rules” for consumers to use in making food
choices. Food guides may also be seen as providing consumers with
a set of principles for translating dietary recommendations into
behavioral terms.