Tag Archive for: nutrition

The Bottom Line on Preschoolers, Probiotics, and Gastroenteritis

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“These studies are likely to have significant impact towards eliminating use of medications that don't seem to work.”

That’s a quote from a physician interviewed by NPR who wrote a commentary accompanying the two research papers on probiotic use for gastroenteritis or GE (1). I think it perfectly illustrates the fallacy of the pharmaceutical model of research on nutrition and its impact on health:

Nutrients are not medications.

They may come in pill form, they can be administered like medications, but they’re nutrients nonetheless.
Questions About the Studies
The . . .

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Nutrition Can’t Fix Everything: Your Genetics

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In this final post on why nutrition can’t fix everything, let’s take a look at genetics. All things being equal, genetics—specifically minor mutations in our genes—is probably the biggest reason why nutrition can’t fix everything. Here are a few examples to explain why it can’t.

For someone with celiac disease, a genetic test can confirm the diagnosis. Once confirmed, the person should no longer eat any foods with gluten to avoid digestive issues. No other nutrient, enzyme, or probiotic can repair the gene. Nutrition can’t fix it.

In last Saturday’s message, I . . .

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Nutrition Can’t Fix Everything: Your Microbiome

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In this post, I’ll cover another reason that nutrition can’t fix everything: our microbiome, the bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other microorganisms that live on and in our bodies. From birth, our microbiome is the result of contact with our mothers and others, our environment, and the foods we eat and don’t eat. It’s also the result of the antibiotics we’ve taken when we’re sick as well as those that have been in the foods we’ve eaten.

Our microbiome works best when it’s in balance; the problem is that doesn’t happen in . . .

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Nutrition Can’t Fix Everything: Baggage

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Happy New Year! I hope you’re ready to make your health a priority in 2017. Let’s begin the New Year right with a statement I discussed in my monthly conference call. I received an email in which someone was convinced that there was a nutritional solution to a health issue that she was having. I thought about that for a couple of months—not her condition but the question in general.

Nutrition cannot fix everything, whether a change in diet or a supplement. I’m going to give you three reasons this week as to why.

Let’s . . .

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Why You Need to Supplement

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The author of the opinion article in JAMA recommended that physicians make their patients aware of the research that questions the effectiveness of supplementation, hence his title “Negligible Benefits, Robust Consumption” (1). In making that recommendation, he gives the precise reason why that’s a bad idea. As I said Thursday, the answer can be found in the data used in the original article in JAMA about supplementation use in the U.S. (2).

While the JAMA article focused on supplementation, it also included data on food . . .

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Nutrition: Knowing Isn’t Doing

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In Tuesday’s message, I said that both the experts and the public in a New York Times nutrition survey considered the vitamin and mineral content of food important or very important when they consider whether a food is healthy or not. But do people have enough information to make a decision about which foods are healthy? Not surprising that the nutrition experts almost all said they did. What shocked me was that 81% of the public also said they had enough information to make healthy choices.

That’s interesting because it contradicts what the authors of the New York . . .

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Nutrition: Experts and the Public Disagree

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A recent New York Times survey compared the survey results of nutrition experts, including me, with the public’s opinions. Some differences make sense—others, not so much.

When asked whether a food was healthy, experts said foods high in fat and/or sugar were generally not healthy. The greatest differences were in granola, granola bars, and frozen yogurt with over a 30% difference between experts, who thought they were not healthy, and the public who thought they were.

What surprised me was that experts viewed coconut oil as not healthy while the public indicated it was healthy. The only . . .

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Nutrition: Experts and the Public Agree

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A couple of months ago, I was asked to participate in a nutrition survey. I don’t usually answer surveys, but this was a request through the American Society of Nutrition (I’m a member) and we were told we’d get a chance to view the data, so I decided to do it. For comparison they also surveyed 2,000 people who were not in the nutrition field, and we’d get to see that data as well. The New York Times health writers published an article on the results (1). I decided to look at the data and . . .

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Improvements in the Nutrition Facts Labels

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The new nutrition facts labels are out and as promised, I’m going to tell you what I think is important about them. Let’s get right to it.

  • The listing of calories per serving is large enough that you can actually read it without searching for it. This is the biggest positive change; I had problems finding it at times and now, it’s the biggest type on the label.
  • The serving size is clearly identifiable. This should eliminate the misdirection food manufacturers used to use to suggest that a half . . .

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Processed Meat and Cancer: The Headlines

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Processed Meat Causes Cancer! That was the type of headline that dominated the Internet news sites, newspapers, and local and network news. One very well known nutrition expert wrote this comment:

The just-released report from the International Agency for Research on Cancer judging processed meat as clearly carcinogenic and red meat as probably carcinogenic has caused consternation among meat producers and consumers.

Note the verbiage that says processed meat is clearly carcinogenic. More about that in a minute. California just announced it’s considering adding processed meat to the . . .

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