What is good nutrition advice?

You may feel that it’s hard to know which foods are healthy because expert advice is always changing.

Of course, there are some nutritional recommendations that have stood the test of time and should be applied by everyone. Undoubtedly some people also use the changing expert advice to justify appalling eating habits on the grounds that nutritional advice is always changing so it is not worth following.

So, we need some way of judging all this information and advice – from ‘experts’, the media, websites, social media, books etc.  The information in this course needs to be assessed too!

The obvious place to start is:

Who is saying it?

Sometimes it’s someone who has found a particular diet beneficial for their serious health problems. They are passionate that it will work for everyone with the same health problem. This is not necessarily true, so be careful of this sort of advice.

It could be someone who is offering a product that solves the problem. This should make you suspicious. You may see it as a way they are trying to make money.  But it doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t buy the product. Some people have developed the product precisely because they see a need for it. They know it has the potential to make a lot of people feel a lot better. They can also develop a successful business too. Companies such as Linwood Health Foods and Optibac Probiotics fit into this category.

Sometimes a manufacturer or industry body is behind some research or website. That again should make you suspicious, but some really do support excellent research and provide reliable knowledge. The Australian Nuts For Life website is an excellent example of a website like this.  On the website, it says: “facilitated by the Australian Nut Industry Council (ANIC) in partnership with Australian nut industry members, from all sectors of the supply chain”.

Sometimes it’s sadly someone who is trying to grow their social media channel. Many people are trying to earn money from their social media activity. To do this they need to grow their audience. One way of doing this is by making outrageous or controversial claims about health and well-being.

The same is true for some of those writing copy for an online news outlet. One journalist told me that some online news outlets pay double if you get more than a certain number of views for your piece. He remarked that this led some people to make outrageous claims so that people would share the piece more readily. They might well know the claim was untrue. They were simply interested in getting more money for the piece.

Does it make sense?

When I review nutritional information, advice and guidelines, I always review it in terms of the conditions that humankind have evolved in and the changes in the environment since then.

For example, people have survived well without nutritional supplements. Mankind has not evolved with a health store or pharmacy around the corner, so to argue that we all need to take supplements does not make sense from the viewpoint of mankind as hunter-gatherers.

It does make sense, however, if circumstances have changed, so that life is now so different that supplementation is beneficial.

This is the argument used for taking mineral supplements – the soil has become so depleted through constantly growing foods in the same ground that it no longer contains the nutrients for the plants, and so these are not available for us to access in this natural way.

Food combining does not make sense in terms of how we evolved. A hunter is unlikely to say, “I’m not eating these succulent berries that I have just come across because I managed to slay and eat a deer an hour ago.” (The protein in the deer is believed not to combine with fruit because of the different transit times in the gut for these different categories of food.)

Some people definitely feel better when they food combine, but the fact that they do is an indication that they have some health problems. They may have digestive problems that need addressing. It’s possible that food combining may have led them to exclude some allergens. Another possibility is that by focussing on their diet they have realised what rubbish they eat and have stopped doing it. The fact that so many people benefit from food combining is an indication of how unhealthy many people are.

A common recommendation is that everyone should take fish oils, because they contain essential fatty acids. ‘Essential’ means that the body needs them but cannot make them itself. So where does this leave vegetarians or vegans?

Many people have evolved in places that do not have access to fish. There are two possibilities here. People with a genetic mutation that does not require these essential fatty acids have evolved in places where fish oils are not available.

The alternative possibility is that there is a non-fish alternative source of essential fatty acids for those in areas with no access to fish. There are several alternatives such as pumpkin seeds and walnuts.  So, yes, an essential oil intake may be necessary for good health, but, no, it does not only have to come from fish.

For many years nutritionists talked about the importance of ‘complete proteins’. Complete proteins contain all the essential amino acids that cannot be made by the human body. Amino acids are vitally important because they build enzymes, hormones, muscle, skin, hair, antibodies, etc.

This advice was a particular issue for vegetarians and vegans because many of their sources of protein were not complete, unlike meat which has a full complement of the essential amino acids.

Vegetarians and vegans were urged to eat pulses and grains (e.g. baked beans on toast) at the same meal to ensure they achieved that magical complete protein. 

Scientists have now established that it is not necessary to eat all of them at the same time, as long as they are all eaten. This change in advice is hardly surprising for early man was an opportunistic hunter and forager and may have gone for long periods with no sources of complete protein available.

In recent years there has been a lot of interest in antioxidants, and some authorities urge everyone to take an antioxidant supplement. Antioxidants, which counter free-radical damage, are often labelled as the premier anti-ageing supplements. Does it make sense to say we need to take these supplements?

Excess free radical production can be caused by smoking, sunbathing, frying food, infections, excessive exercise, stress, radiation and environmental pollution. Exposure to the last three is certainly on the increase. This could be sufficient in itself to support a recommendation for taking an anti-oxidant supplement.

The fact that anti-oxidant supplementation is to counter ageing raises another issue. Evolution and selection are all about breeding. If you have the right gene variations that will allow you to live to a fertile age and breed more effectively, your genes are likely to have a good chance of surviving and becoming the norm. Gene variations that help us to live healthily into old age cannot be selected in the same way, as it will not affect our ability to breed. Evolution does not select for variations that help us live healthily into old age, it selects for fecundity, our ability to reproduce.  Because of this, it is not illogical to think that we might need nutritional support to be healthy in old age.

So, when you are assessing nutritional knowledge bear in mind:

• It could be wrong, even if the book or the person giving the information sounds convincing.
• It could be wrong, even if the person giving the information believes totally that it is true.
• You could have misunderstood.
• It does not necessarily apply to everyone – we are all different.
• Does it make sense in terms of how we have evolved from being hunter-gatherers?
• Is it specifically aimed at improving people’s post-fertile period of life?
• Does the person giving this knowledge have a vested interest in your believing it?