They demonize sugar. Yep, they criminalize a single nutrient source. They’re on a soapbox proclaiming that it’s ruining everyone’s health and how we should avoid it. This is silly because we all need a certain amount of sugar in the form of glucose to live.
As I see it, criticizing specific foods generally nudges individual choices in a direction that isn’t always best for them. The desire to be healthier can make someone vulnerable to organizations that incite fear and mistrust while exploiting the scientific ignorance of their followers. Others are downright conspiracy theorists who use words like “Big Agri and Big Pharma.” Large agricultural or drug conglomerates have their issues, but fearmongering can stifle objective reasoning.
During everyday conversations, I see an air of superiority while folks school others on how they should eat. The unsolicited kind that starts with “you should.” I suspect we’re all guilty of it on some level. But in my experience, any off-the-cuff statements automatically warrant further investigation.
Even in traditional healthcare settings, nutrition advice can be shortsighted. Often, I hear generalizations like, “Just cut out the sugar and eat more protein.” A practitioner untrained in nutrition education may not realize the repercussions of what they say. Especially for a patient who just learned they have type 2 diabetes. Phrases like this are a disservice to anyone seeking advice on what to do next. Imagine the emotional toll after learning your life is about to change significantly. At the very least, situations like this warrant a referral to someone who can explain how to introduce appropriate amounts of protein into the diet.
The nutrition expert knows it’s better to put aside their judgments while using a patient-centered approach. By completing a nutrition assessment, the dietitian gathers information about a patient’s health conditions, lifestyle, and food intake history. Then they can provide personalized medical nutrition therapy that meets a patient where they are instead of expecting them to conform to a certain ideal.
For the average consumer, it’s hard to know who to trust. There are bad apples everywhere. Most folks don’t pay enough attention to what they hear and immediately accept it as fact. They don’t go any further to look at the who, what, and where a source of information came from. But no one is born knowing how to review a scientific study published in a peer-reviewed journal. Most rely on an interpretation of the facts. But low-quality interpretations lead folks in the wrong direction.
The truth is no one knows everything there is to know about nutrition.
Nutrition science is ever-changing. The USDA updates itself every 5 years with new findings which can become the subject of sensationalism like the low-fat diets of the 90s left everyone hungrier. I admit to developing an obsession with baked potato chips back then. When I went back to regular chips, the taste was far better, and I didn’t eat as many.
As it turned out certain types of fat are beneficial to our health. Poly and monosaturated fats became the new heroes. But not before the food industry went off the deep end making low-fat versions of popular foods. Fat-free mayonnaise was by far the most ridiculous.
The modern all-or-nothing approach is to remove the sugar to double the protein. Once again the food industry answered the call. Now it’s common for people to self-prescribe a protein powder and avoid red meat while believing they’re consuming something natural. There are more brands of protein powder available than ever before. Too much of a good thing has negative health consequences.
A nutrition expert knows how to put the brakes on all the hype because they know there’s always more to every story. They look at both sides of an argument while pausing to review all the evidence before speaking to an audience. No flashy words, or celebrity endorsements. They don’t focus on placing the blame on things we can’t control, instead, they focus more on encouraging personal accountability. Most importantly they won’t validate the demonization of sugar, an all too important source of energy.
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