diet

diet

¹

a. a specific allowance or selection of food, esp prescribed to control weight or in disorders in which certain foods are contraindicated

b. (as modifier): a diet bread

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diet

²

1. Politics a legislative assembly in various countries, such as Japan

2. History the assembly of the estates of the Holy Roman Empire

3. Scots law

a. the date fixed by a court for hearing a case

b. a single session of a court

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

diet

[′dī·ət]

(biology)

The food or drink regularly consumed.

(medicine)

Food prescribed, regulated, or restricted as to kind and amount, for therapeutic or other purpose.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Diet

 

a specially planned nutritional regimen with respect to quantity, chemical composition, physical properties, culinary processing, and intervals of food ingestion. The nutritional regimen of a healthy individual that meets the requirements of his occupation, sex, age, and so forth (a rational diet) is the subject of study of nutritional hygiene. Dietetics, the science of therapeutic nutrition, is concerned with the development and prescription of diets for sick individuals. The planning of a diet takes into account the functional, pathomorphological, metabolic, enzymic, and other disturbances in the human organism. A properly selected diet creates the most favorable background for the use of various treatments, reinforces the effects of these treatments, or exerts a therapeutic effect. The prophylactic significance of diet is that it deters acute diseases from becoming chronic ones.

REFERENCE

Pokrovskii, A. A. Besedy o pitanii. Moscow, 1968.
Diet for animals is the feeding regimen for a sick animal. Prescription of a diet takes into account the diagnosis and course of the disease, the state of the sick animal, and its age, sex, breed, and productivity. The feed rations of a sick animal must include high-quality, easily digestible feeds with a complete complement of the necessary nutrients. When there is a vitamin deficiency in the rations of herbivorous animals, they are given hay and meal of leguminous grasses, mixed silage, sprouted grain, infusion of coniferous needles, and nutritional yeasts. Carnivorous animals in the same situation are given milk, fresh meat, fish, liver, and eggs. When there is a deficiency or an incorrect proportion of macroelements and microelements, appropriate mineral supplements manufactured in the form of salt pellets or mixed feeds are introduced. Sometimes certain feeds are limited in the rations or are subjected to special processing (pulverization, steaming, fermentation).

REFERENCES

Dmitrochenko, A. P., and P. D. Pshenichnyi. Kormlenie se’skokhoziaistvennykh zhivotnykh. Leningrad, 1964.
Vnutrennie nezaraznye bolezni sel’skokhoziaistvennykh zhivotnykh, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1964.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.