Nutrition Controversy for Skeptics

The cover story of the May/June 2009 issue of Skeptical Inquirer, a magazine that I rarely pick up unless the cover has a particularly eye-catching lead, held the headline "Science & Pseudoscience in Nutrition."

With a title like that, I had to take a look.

The article was actually titled Science and Pseudoscience in Adult Nutrition Research and Practice by Reynold Spector and started on page 35 and postulated that "Human nutrition research and practice is plagued by pseudoscience and unsupported opions. A scientific analysis separates reliable nutrition facts from nutritional pseudoscience and false opinion."

The article wasn't so much a debunking of various myths and ideas in nutrition as much as it was an analysis of the fact that such myths exist and why; it made me sad to see how much crap is out there more than clearing up some of the myths that exist. I suppose if it was an article trying to spread the truth of various myths then it wouldn't be much different from the articles you can find in most supermarket checkouts, though (except that one of the exceptional features of Skeptical Inquirer is that it does actually have reference notes in articles that take up more than two lines at the end of the piece...I was about to shorten the title to SI, but I really don't think Sports Illustrated is noted for putting in such footnotes).

The article sets out to answer four questions, paraphrasing:

1. What do we know about adult nutrition?
2. Is there an optimum body weight?
3. Why are there so many confusing or contradictory data and opinions in literature, media, and books, regarding things like whether certain foods even in moderation are harmful and are food supplements like megavitamins helpful?
4. Why are there so many erroneous or uninterpretable nutritional experiments...pseudoscience...in the literature?

The article is surprisingly readable and at 7 pages in length doesn't take long to get through and the conclusions were unsurprising to a cynic like me but may be interesting to the average Joe spending his day being assaulted by various weight-loss and nutrition headlines by magazines and news media. The sad part is that the conclusions won't be anything we want to hear.

Even a healthy skeptic like myself still woke up finding that I wanted to have a weekly trip to Red Lobster for my once-a-week fish serving because...vaguely...it's supposed to be healthy.

I suppose old habits die hard. At least I added a little more to my knowledge store.