Thread by @TamarHaspel

OK y’all I have a theory about why so many people eat CRAP DIETS. It’s because we’ve made nutrition so COMPLICATED that we need doctors to tell us what to eat (see this study). This makes ordinary folks trying to eat well feel POWERLESS. (RANT ALERT) thelancet.com/journals/lanpl…

This new Lancet study about how doctors don’t get enough nutrition education. One of the things they measure? Do you know the recommended daily servings of fruit and veg? Which is ARBITRARY, because we don’t have anything like the ability to get that from population data.

Different groups have different recommendations, and the current Dietary Guidelines doesn’t even contain the word SERVINGS. (Because the emphasis has shifted to dietary patterns, and away from arbitrary recommendations.) health.gov/dietaryguideli…

But that’s just one little point. The real issue here is that when people are convinced that nutrition is the province of EXPERTS, they are completely DISEMPOWERED. Ordinary non-experts can’t know what to eat any more than they can do SURGERY or NUCLEAR PHYSICS.

The idea that you gotta be an expert to figure out what to eat makes people susceptible to NUTRITION NONSENSE peddled by folks with initials after their names. Raise your hand if you’ve ever read ridiculous nutritional shit from an MD, RD, or PhD on this here twitter.

Then, when experts don’t agree, and headlines keep changing (eggs! saturated fat! sodium! cholesterol! alcohol!) people throw up their hands and head for the drive-thru, since if all those EXPERTS can’t agree, what hope is there?

Here’s the ONE THING I think everyone should know. Experts, non-experts, everyone. WE CAN’T STUDY NUTRITION & HEALTH VERY WELL. So we really don’t know very much about the connection between specific foods or nutrients and health outcomes.

So I propose TWO RULES for eating healthfully.
1. Eat a wide variety of foods with nutrients intact (whole or whole-ish, lots of plants but also some animal products if you like them)
2. Keep calories consistent with a healthy weight.
THAT’S IT. washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food…

Oh and please spare me CALORIES is so 80s! Of course not all calories are the same and you can’t count them accurately. We need calories ABSORBED and calories EXPENDED. Both are IMPOSSIBLE to calculate. But you know what?

You have a sure-fire tool to tell you if your calories-absorbed-calories-expended (CACE) calculation is correct. It’s your bathroom scale. If you’re gaining weight, you gotta eat fewer calories.

I want nutrition education for doctors to be that we have NOWHERE NEAR the evidence for specific recommendations like 4 servings of fruit. Eat a wide variety of foods with nutrients intact, in quantities right for the weight you want to be, and you’ll be fine.

CAVEAT: In places where nutritional deficiences still cause disease, this is NOT TRUE. People who are truly nutrient-deficient need help from the health care system.

When people feel like they need other people to tell them what to eat you get stuff like “OH, just cut out FAT? Pass the SNACKWELLS?” Or “OH, just cut out SUGAR? Pass the FRENCH FRIES?” And stuff like the carnivore diet.

Telling people that eating well isn’t complicated EMPOWERS them to decide FOR THEMSELVES what to eat. No experts necessary. This is a job for COMMON SENSE, which is all it takes to identify a crappy diet. So maybe we’ll have fewer of them.
Thanks for listening. I'm done now.