Nutrition science is so confusing. That’s okay!

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Hi there! Samarth Bansal here, your Editor. I am writing today’s edition that deals with a somewhat meta question about knowledge and ignorance around health and nutrition: is figuring out what to eat really complex?

In November 2015, physician-turned-journalist James Hamblin attended a gathering of 25 world-renowned nutrition scientists, organised by David Katz, director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, and Walter Willett, chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

These experts united with a clear objective: to dispel the notion that nutrition science is chaotic and to converge on shared principles regarding food and health that could benefit society.

Each scientist made a case for why their dietary approach was the optimal one for health. The perspectives were quite diverse: Among them were T. Colin Campbell, a leading figure in the modern vegan movement; Stanley Boyd Eaton, co-creator of the ‘Paleo diet’; and Antonia Trichopoulou, who brought the ‘Mediterranean Diet’ to global prominence.

They heard each other. Then they decided to sit down and ‘find common ground’. It started with a simple proposition that Hamblin —?the only journalist in the room — thought would be the least controversial: “Can we say that everyone should eat vegetables?”

Hamblin was asked not to quote anyone directly to encourage free brainstorming and open dialogue, but in his book, If Our Bodies Could Talk, he recounts the conversation as follows

Most nodded. Then someone said, well, what kinds of vegetables? Cooked or raw?

“After the first hour, we had arrived at no consensus on whether it could be said that people should eat vegetables,” Hamblin wrote.?

This rattled me a bit. Think about it. The world’s leading scientists, who have dedicated their lives to studying nutrition, couldn’t agree on how to recommend eating vegetables.

Why??

Hamblin explains:?

“Over the next four hours, it became clear why this sort of consensus statement does not exist. Every one of the twenty-five scientists in the room did, very clearly, agree that people should eat vegetables. And fruits, nuts, seeds, and legumes. They all agreed that this should be the basis of everyone’s diets. There should be variety, and there should not be excessive “processing” of the foods.?

The devil was in how to say this. They stayed until midnight that day in Boston, trying to figure it out.”

That’s the critical point here: reaching a consensus on nutrition isn’t solely about agreeing on what to eat; it’s about finding the right way to communicate complex ideas effectively and universally.?

Which requires understanding context, anticipating how people might interpret the information, and considering the potential ramifications of how it’s conveyed.

Fair enough. But where does this leave the average person? The scientists themselves – in a moment of collective self-awareness – recognised that their inability to present a unified front leads to significant societal issues.

As Hambin writes:

When people sense the absence of a single established consensus on nutrition, this invites them to see every diet trend as equally valid. It gives credence to whatever the latest news story suggests, or whatever the Kardashians are doing, or to whoever is selling the latest book about how carbs/fat/gluten are “toxic.”

And then this absence of agreement becomes the ultimate weapon for the powers-that-be to exploit this uncertainty. You know the classic trope: “experts disagree!”

This leads to the cultivation of ‘active ignorance’ —?one of the biggest obstacles to a healthier society. He writes:

Experts can and will continue to disagree on how to interpret bodies of evidence; this is a foundational element of science. It means the process is working like it’s supposed to. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t consensus about many of the tenets of nutrition.

Hamblin describes this as a “tactic of demagogues to make people believe that no one knows anything—so you might as well believe their absurd idea.”

Let’s make the problem clearer. Many people confuse ignorance as simply the lack of knowledge. Nope—that’s a relatively easy problem to solve: providing more facts.?

Ignorance is actually the outcome of deliberate cultivation, says Stanford professor Robert Proctor. It’s spread through tactics like marketing and rumour, which spread more widely than more informed, wise words. From Hamblin’s book:

The classic example of purposeful ignorance is that created by the tobacco industry. Ever since tobacco was clearly proven to cause lung cancer in the 1960s, the industry has attempted to cultivate doubt in science itself. It cannot refute the facts of cigarettes, so it turned the public opinion against knowledge. Can anything really be known?

This pattern—we all know—is so rampant in health information. Ignorance, then, is as much an enemy of a healthier world as refined sugar. We must resist the cultivation of ignorance—in ourselves, and our society.?

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