What should you eat?

One of the many things I’ve learned working with clients and talking to lots of people about nutrition over the last year is that people are really frustrated with the amount of conflicting and often inaccurate nutrition information out there. 

Everyone seems fed up with the nutrition confusion that exists—from tenured professors, to people struggling to manage their chronic diseases, to people who are just trying to be more healthy (whatever that may mean). 

I could write a whole post ranting about the amount of misinformation influenced by the food industry, the broken food system, politics, and the $72 billion diet industry.  But I won’t. 

I could also defend some of the confusion.  After all, absolutely every body is different.  Different genes, different epigenetics, different bacteria, different experiences.  The science just isn’t there to tell you –specifically, uniquely you—what type of dietary pattern is optimal for you.  And, let’s be honest, if they could, would you follow it? Would you want to? (I’d need to know whether avocado made the cut). Even assuming you would, science cannot yet answer, “what should you eat?”  But it is really hard to decide what to put in your mouth every day without some guidance.  So our national dietary recommendations are based on what seems to be best for most people.  Maybe you are most people.  Maybe you aren’t.  Maybe that is why you are frustrated. 

Whatever the reason for the nutrition confusion, I feel strongly that there’s a need for some clarity around what we actually know, the basics.  And there needs to be some acknowledgment about what we think is probably true (rather than actually know) and what there is still an open question about. 

I started a blog last year when I started my Ph.D. program that is aimed, in part, at providing accurate nutritional science to counteract some of the swirling nutrition misinformation in the blogosphere.  But I’ll be honest, it is still pretty dense. Lots of talk of molecules and enzymes that I try to salvage with fun pictures.  I don’t think I’ve succeeded.

So here, in this blog, I want to get to the basics of nutritional science without any of that biochemistry and without diet dogma.  I’m starting with everyone’s favorite: carbohydrates.  So get your croissant, or avocado toast, or fruit bowl ready Friday morning.  I’ll follow up by digging a little deeper into carbohydrates with new posts each Friday through the summer on things like fiber and added sugar. Then we’ll pick a different macronutrient, like fat. 

I would love to get to the basics of some nutrition questions you have.  Let me know about your frustrations or nutrition confusions by leaving me a message in the comments or here.