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Diet has been long overlooked as a predictor of health and wellness. The west is immensely interested in 'diet' when it concerns weight loss, but focuses less on the potential health outcomes. Diet-related diseases are complicated and the risk associated with nutritional and dietary habits is difficult to assess.

Diet seems to be especially related to chronic diseases such as autoimmune diseases, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Chronic diseases often develop over years and the mechanisms of development include genetics, environment, and diet.

Most adults are aware of their approximate blood pressure and weight, but know little about their diet quality. A well-balanced diet consists of whole foods and nutrients, like lean meats, grains, green cruciferous vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts and seeds, and minimal dairy. The standard American diet is significantly more processed and unhealthy.

According to nutritional epidemiologist Maya Vadiveloo, "dietary patterns and quality are not sufficiently prioritized when addressing modifiable risk factors during regular health care office visits." She insists diet is significant in predicting health status and mortality and should ideally be screened continuously.

Dr. David Katz is a leading researcher in dietary intake assessment methods and is board-certified in preventative medicines and public health. Dr. Katz has produced over 200 peer-reviewed publications during his career, and is the author of over a dozen textbooks and books. Dr. Katz argues that dietary intake assessment can be "reverse engineered", by assessing and recognizing dietary patterns instead of inefficiently endeavoring to assemble foods one food, meal, dish or day at a time.

Dr. Katz has developed a dietary intake assessment known as Diet ID. This new tool provides an evidenced-based solution to this problem.

Diet ID is a digital toolkit assessment that takes patients only a minute to complete. Diet ID combines pattern-based recognition logic to make dietary assessment quick, user-friendly, economical, and scalable. This enables better assessment of dietary quality into a "universally measured and routinely managed vital sign" while also providing recommended diet changes to patients.

Implementation of diet screening tools and procedures would allow clinicians to fill this dietary vacuum and significantly improve health outcomes and patient care. Clinical guidance can help educate patients on appropriate dietary changes to improve long-term health.

Current tools capture dietary intake based on either real-time journaling or recall. This method is labor intensive and time consuming and humans aren't the best at remembering detail.

In a world post-covid, the long-term health challenges for clinicians is unknown. According to Dr. Katz, diet "not only influences everything about our health over a lifetime, but it acutely affects the function of our immune system and exerts an outsized influence on risk factors related to COVID."

Research suggests that those infected with Covid-19, especially those that were severely ill or hospitalized, have impaired lung function. These patients are known as 'long haulers' and experience continued symptoms such as coughing, shortness of breath, headaches, and brain fog.

Clinicians can incorporate dietary assessment toolkits, like DietID, as a vital sign into their regular office visits. The American Heart Association has recently come out in support of routine diet assessment implementation by healthcare providers. Long-term tracking of dietary habits, with guided steps to improve diet choices and balance, could reduce incidence of heart disease, high-blood pressure, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, and obesity.

If interested in learning more about dietary intake assessments and their relationship to patient outcomes, Dr. Katz will be speaking to Charm Health about his digital toolkit DietID. [WATCH WEBINAR VIDEO]