Dietology

Diet Ideologies and Nutrition Misinformation

I’m going to say something that risks my credibility, may disappoint you and might even make you want to click off this article. I have 30 years’ experience working in the field of nutrition and I don’t know what an optimal diet looks like. Worse: I can’t even come close!

If me saying this makes you feel that I lack validity, I’m more than okay with that. I just don’t want you to buy into the nutrition bullshit that’s thrown around. It’s my duty, as an experienced professional, to help you steer away from the dietary misinformation you’re exposed to every day from the food industry, marketers, policymakers, social media influencers and even many scientists and nutritionists. I’ll sleep soundly at night if this affects how people feel about my credibility because no one knows what an optimal diet looks like. This is for one simple reason: there isn’t one. What does “optimal diet” mean anyway? Optimal in terms of how many years it adds to life? Optimal for lowering risk of chronic disease? Optimal for losing weight? Optimal for what age, sex or body weight?

I do, however, know what a poor diet looks like and I bet you do, too. The scope of what can be described as “poor quality diets”, however, is vast. It ranges from the diets of people in poorer nations who have limited access to adequate nutrition to those of us in the developed world with such a wide array of foods to choose from that many of us are consuming too much.

Introducing “Dietology”

We’ve established that we know what poor diets are despite not knowing what an optimal one is. But what about suitably nutritious diets? This is where things get interesting. There have been multitudes of dietary strategies published in numerous books and websites over many decades. Each regimen has its proponents lined up ready to defend their nutritional ideology. In my book, Well Fed, I’ve named this “dietology”: a portmanteau of “diet and “ideology”.

Dietology is the dogmatic commitment to a nutrition-related belief that’s not based on a critical appraisal of the available evidence. Crucially, even when presented with otherwise convincing evidence to the contrary, one still holds that belief and may even double down on their claims further.

Dietology camps include the “low carbers”, the “low fatters”, the “ketos”, the “paleos”, the “carnivores”, the “carb cyclers”, the “juicers” … I could go on. And “ideology” is the right term: just look at the number of social media accounts that include mention of the diet “tribe” to which they ascribe their allegiance – like “keto.james” or “melanie-the-carnivore”* – proudly worn like a badge of honour. Moreover, what makes this issue particularly hard to navigate is that often each camp is able to present a great deal of seemingly credible peer-reviewed evidence to back up its claims. How can we be expected to discern the truth? At the very least, we want to know if there’s a preferable dietary strategy that will support a long, healthy, disease-free life, while enjoying our time being active to the maximum of our capabilities.

Dietological Incentives

“Avoid oats; they cause inflammation!” “Fruit is just sugar; it raises insulin!” “Avoid fish or you’ll poison your body with mercury!” “Cruciferous veg lowers your testosterone!” “It’s got more than four ingredients, so it’s ultra-processed!” Day after day, we’re bombarded with confusing and conflicting information from social media influencers, demanding that we follow their nutrition advice. Spend a few minutes scrolling through social media and your feed will show multiple fitness influencers blurting “facts” about some food or another.

In Nutrition Misinformation and Social Media I discuss the problems of dietary misinformation. Crucially, the repercussions of dangerous nutrition content aren’t limited to the physiological. There are equally concerning environmental and psycho-social impacts, too. Not only are we living in a time of anthropomorphic climate change, ecological destruction and demographic growth, many families continually endure day-to-day financial pressures, ever demanding kids and all the other stresses of modern life. If the majority of people were to adopt the advice doled out by some influencers – such as by those who advocate meat-heavy diets – the food system, in its current guise, simply wouldn’t cope. Moreover, contrary to popular belief, obesity isn’t a choice: maintaining a healthy weight is disproportionately harder for some people than others. As well as this, there are foods shunned by influencers that are linked to particular cultures; villainising them risks alienating people based on their cultural preferences.

Consequently, when considering all these concerns, much of the advice from unqualified influencers is, frankly, unrealistic. What’s preached is a dietology marketed as a one-size-fits-all when, in reality, it’s a one-size-fits-none approach. It seems that for many online charlatans, preaching their dietology is what’s truly important to them, rather than actually caring about the wellbeing of their audience. What are the benefits of trying to make people feel like they must buy a particular food or behave in a certain way when they’re already experiencing multiple burdens in their daily lives? With many people impacted by socio-economic woes and financial tensions, influencers who fearmonger affordable foods while promoting expensive alternatives, reek of unrealised privilege.

Convenient Answers to Complex Issues

Nutrition science is rife with washy-washy answers to specific queries. How much protein do I need to grow 18-inch biceps? What calorie deficit do I need to lose 20 pounds? Will eating saturated fats give me a heart attack?

Humans seek convenient, robust solutions to hugely complex issues, and nutrition science provides precious few answers. It’s no wonder people are confused. Through decades of rigorous research, the extent of what we now know in the field of nutrition and dietetics is mind-blowing. Indeed, humanity’s insight into the science of what we eat continues to grow at an exponential rate. This is a beautiful thing. However, this means that to possess a reasonable level of nutrition knowledge requires you to do some work, a problem exacerbated by the need to wade through the ever-increasing amounts of contradictory information. Moreover, the more our knowledge of nutrition science grows, the more we realise the extent of what we don’t know, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between truth and pseudoscientific pretence. When this stems from people having a range of ideas born out of different interpretations of the evidence, this should be celebrated. Unfortunately, however, opinions are too often based on emotionally charged conjecture serving to assert one’s dietology.

So, how does one distinguish the more credible information from the bad? While science does indeed attempt to provide answers, how many of us are motivated to trawl through hundreds of papers on a topic and then listen to several experts’ interpretations of the ever-changing data? Biases abound, the scientific process is slow, fallible, prone to corruption and poorly understood. Worse: even if we were to follow the scientific consensus, what’s to say that this isn’t wrong and itself subject to bias?

Social media platforms are rife with influencers dolling out dangerous misinformation in the guise of good health. When challenged by experts, low-rung thinkers tend to double down further on their message. Of course, none of us like to have our beliefs challenged: it’s uncomfortable and counterintuitive to consider ideas that run contrary to our beliefs. But an ideologue will remain committed to his or her ideas.

If you’re a supporter of an influencer who dismisses science in favour of their own made-up narrative, and you’re failing to critically appraise their advice, then you’re following a dietology. But by using the tools to help you recognise nutrition misinformation, and through being empowered with knowledge of diet and nutrition, you’ll be able to spot the charlatans and switch to following accounts that provide sensible advice. Encouragingly, there seems to be a growing number of qualified and experienced nutritionists and dietitians on social media who provide evidence-based, practical tips that they relay in an enjoyable and easy-to-understand style.

Read more about dietology, nutrition misinformation and how to avoid it in Well Fed: How modern diets are failing us (and what we can do about it). Available here.

* The names are made up to illustrate my point (using my own and my wife’s first names). I make no apology to those with similar handles.