THE COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE THERAPEUTIC DIET

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of therapeutic diet depending on background diet, eating behavior and occupational exposure, authors assessed food intake, nutritional adequacy of the daily food consumption in 2000 workers of similar social and economic background, working in similar conditions. Therapeutic diets No. 2 and No. 3 used at 6 metallurgical facilities were analyzed. The effectiveness of therapeutic diets developed by the authors was evaluated in workers of relevant occupations at two enterprise-based prevention and rehabilitation centers. The authors assessed the nutritional status and health of the workers with unbalanced background diet but on-the-job therapeutic diet and the workers who are on a balanced background diet and on-the-job therapeutic diet. The results show workers with unbalanced diet in terms of fat, carbohydrate, vitamin and trace element consumption as well as ill-conceived therapeutic diet to have impaired fat and carbohydrate metabolism, obesity of various degrees, premorbidities that exacerbate the effects of occupational exposure and increase the likelihood of occupational and work-related diseases. The comprehensive preventive approach, that involves reducing occupational exposure and improving the daily diet including the therapeutic diet, yields the most effective results. The use of therapeutic diets in workers maintaining a balanced background diet results in significant health gain compared to those who are treated in the same enterprise-based prevention and rehabilitation centers but whose background diet is unbalanced. They exhibit weight loss, lower arterial blood pressure, improved carbohydrate and fat metabolism, antioxidant status and functional indicators as well as reduced metal levels in biological media.