List of Food Substitutes vs Nutrients Balance: Which one is the future of designing diets in 21 st century?

One of the first lines in controlling diseases and malnutrition is diet therapy and currently, due to tool limitations, for designing the patients’ diet plan, the food groups and the list of food substitutes are being used while suitable databases of foods composition are available. Methods of designing individuals’ diet and total of 8791 foods are reviewed to calculate the nutrients of mixed foods and design a suitable method of diet therapy with more freedom for the patients in the future. Food groups because of their simplicity are suitable for public health educations but have limitations that could be better covered using nutrient balances. The main cause of developing the list of food substitutes was the limitations in calculating nutrients in a designed diet that currently could be run using applications. Patients also by using self-management nutrition applications that based on the nutrient balancing method shown they are ready to accept this method. A well-designed application can make using nutrient balancing method which is the future of diets possible. However, the main limitation is still the needs for a big, validated, and accurate foods composition database that needs to be developed. Keywords: : Diet, Food Groups, Nutrients, Diet therapy, Nutrition