Two of my best friends are a vegan and a vegetarian, and I’m eating nothing but rib-eyes, eggs, bacon, and dairy. Considering each of us believes we are eating the best diet for health, it’s seemingly a crazy juxtaposition. The weak nutrition pseudo-science we’ve been fed for the last 70 years has created an unusual amount of confusion behind what constitutes a healthy diet. After spending billions of dollars, these research institutions telling us what to eat have not furthered our goal of determining the optimal human nutrition.
They’ve done the opposite.
“Nutrition Science” has been overrun with weak data. It is literally food frequency questionnaires that people fill out twice more than 2 decades. Then researchers use that information to tell us what to eat and tease out news headline-worthy “correlations” between what food the researchers think may cause different diseases. It’s called nutrition epidemiology. There are numerous issues with it, but the main one comes down to bad data.
This is not a randomized controlled clinical trial. These “studies” do not provide information you can use to determine anything remotely close to an answer about what to eat. With this type of research, you can get whatever answer you want based on the design of the study. People have dedicated their lives to this information dumpster fire to further their careers and corporate agendas. It is not science.
In case you’re wondering, this is the information they use to determine the Dietary Guidelines. These guidelines are absolute bullshit and not science-based. They are made up of these questionnaires, assumptions, industry influence, and conjecture. Real science direly needs to be brought to the field of nutrition.
If we remove nutritional epidemiology from the scientific literature, we actually begin to see a pattern emerge. Using randomized controlled trials as our baseline for what constitutes useful data (what the FDA does before they approve a new drug, for example), we can see that optimal human health is actually achieved by eating nutrient-dense real food.
The optimal human diet is one that avoids: processed foods, seed and vegetable oils, refined grains and sugar.
After you remove those things from the diet, you end up with foods that contain the highest amount of nutrient density. This prioritizes vitamins, minerals, and amino acids over empty calories. These are the items on the outside isles of the grocery store. Fresh produce, meat, cheese, eggs, and dairy. When done in this manner, it is possible to maintain health and wellness, whether it’s high-carb, low-carb, keto, carnivore, paleo, vegetarian, or vegan… albeit vegans need to supplement some nutrients.
It is depressing that our nutrition institutions do not merely promote eating real foods for nutrient density as the most optimal way to eat for health and longevity.
– Shane Lamotte
Shane Lamotte 