Nutrition May Be the Key to Overall Kidney Health

The adage “You are what you eat,” often is thrown about. Most of the time, when food is thought about, it usually centers on how much weight it might cause us to gain or lose. But there is so much more to food than pounds. What is consumed can affect overall health outcomes, including chronic illnesses such as kidney disease. Kidneys are the most common organ transplanted as chronic kidney disease (CKD) affects about 15% of adults in the U.S. Nationally, there were 25,499 kidney transplants in in 2019, and there are 92,000 on the waiting list for a transplant.

The idea is that nutritional and dietary approaches can offer preventative and therapeutic interventions to manage obesity, metabolic syndrome and diabetes. Cardiovascular and renal diseases could also potentially be managed by lifestyle medicine. “Proper nutrition and lifestyles play a crucial role in maintaining kidney health and preventing the onset or progression or onset of CKD,” Moore added.

“If you grow up on a farm where the fruits and vegetables are grown, that's what you get used to eating. Those are the foods that are at your table. In the city, we are less accustomed to doing that. I don't know what the reason is, but we don't do it. I think we have more access to quickly available foods like fast food. They are almost as affordable if not more affordable. But it doesn't have to be that way. It primarily comes down to choice, and we’re choosing the wrong stuff,” emphasized Moore. “Whatever your income or wherever you live, you have the ability to eat healthily. You can do it, and, to a great extent, eating healthy for the majority of people could mean just eating less.” Nutrition education in communities can play a vital role by providing an overview on the impact of suboptimal lifestyle choices. Community nutrition initiatives could include community workshops that discuss the significance of community-based nutrition programs in promoting kidney health with an emphasis on: the diet quality index; management of diabetes and obesity; culinary medicine and food as medicine; precision nutrition approaches in community nutrition; accurate estimates of renal function; use of plant dominant diets; nutrition in living kidney donors; role of dietitians in medical nutrition therapy to slow CKD progression, health and nutrition literacy in kidney care; the role of social media in renal nutrition; the role of functional nutrition, naturopathic nutrition, and integrative and holistic renal nutrition in kidney health.