Beware the Nutrition Expert

A great blog post by Tim Crowe (Dietitian/Associate Professor in Nutrition) – Beware the Nutrition Expert – discusses the fact that there are a lot of people on the internet with no nutrition qualifications trying to convince people to ignore the science and follow their theories on how to eat.

If you don’t read all of his post, at least read this bit…

“We can learn much from the world’s healthiest and longest lived people, spread through different regions all around the world. People in these long-lived ‘hot spots’ have some very clear and consistent patterns. They nurture strong social networks, consume a mostly plant-based diet, and incorporate daily, natural physical activity into their lives. They also do not overeat, learning to stop eating before they feel full.

Long-lived people don’t avoid dairy foods or gluten. They don’t calculate the glycaemic index of their meals. They don’t ruminate on if the grains they are eating are stopping the absorption of other nutrients. They don’t live in a fantasy world and think that they’re eating and living like their Palaeolithic ancestors. They don’t take supplements. They eat. They move. They enjoy. They socially engage with their community in person. They live.

Yet even between the different long-lived communities, there is diversity in the foods they eat showing there is no one single ‘right’ way to eat, only flexible guidelines. Choosing mostly seasonal fruits and vegetables, and a variety of beans, nuts, seeds and grains is the cornerstone of their dietary pattern.

You could happily layer the Dietary Guidelines over any of these eating patterns and come out a winner.

Get the basics right and you can hit the snooze button on needing to ever again pay attention to anything you ever read or hear in the media or from populist diet book gurus.”

Thanks Tim 🙂