Understanding how the food we eat affects our long-term health is surprisingly difficult to figure out. This field, unfortunately, has a history of drawing conclusions based on fairly poor evidence that later turned out to be at least partly wrong. The resulting back and forth between different diet approaches, each only weakly supported by scientific evidence, has led to confusion about how to eat. As a result, many people have abandoned scientific evidence, with the argument that science hasn’t really provided the answers we need to understand how diet affects long-term health. And that abandonment has led to a rise in diet tribes and pseudo-scientific approaches to eating, superficial views that attribute complex diseases to a single food or dietary factor, and sales pitches for dubious diet programs or supplements. 

We have drawn a very different conclusion from the mistakes of the past. Yes, nutrition science is a difficult science, often forced to work with weak evidence. And yes, the field has often drawn conclusions based on this weak evidence that later had to be revised. However, that does not mean that a non-scientific approach will be more likely to lead us to answers that are truly helpful for our health. It simply means that we need to apply scientific principles more rigorously. This relates to the conduct of the research, but particularly how we interpret and communicate the available data. Our goal at Nourished by Science is to raise the standard of rigor in how we read the scientific literature, the conclusions we draw from it, and the way we communicate the findings.

Doing justice to a complex science means that a real understanding can only be achieved by diving below the surface. All too often, the conversation about certain foods reminds me of the metaphor of the blind men and the elephant. It is easy to make a compelling argument if we focus just on one clear and convincing aspect of a complex issue. So of course the blindfolded person below who stands next to the tail can claim, full of conviction, that what they are dealing with here is a rope, while others are certain that it’s a wall, a snake, or a tube. To figure out the full truth means that they all need to be willing to listen to each other, to consider the entirety of the ‘evidence’, and realize that their one piece of ‘data’ is only a small piece of a complex puzzle.