If you’re confused about nutrition, I don’t blame you one bit. Social media is only complicating that since so many people have platforms to influence how you think and feel about food. I wish people truly understood that nutrition is a profession, not an opinion. For example, I have no idea how to build a house, and I wouldn’t even dare to try. I’m sure there are many different materials, techniques, methods, approaches and choices and I would want to consult with someone who has expertise and experience. They could collaborate with me as we consider my needs, goals and personal circumstances. I could probably use examples from other industries too! The point is that nutrition requires education, expertise and experience, not just personal stories, ideas or opinions.
It’s more important than ever to be able to spot bad nutrition advice. Below are 5 things to look for:
1. Uses absolute language that you confuse to mean competence and professional certainty.
Nutrition science is relatively young while also dynamic, meaning we continue to learn and evolve in our understanding. Evidenced based advice is communicated with context, pros and cons, the degree of certainty and uncertainty and in relativity (ie “may improve” or “possibly correlated with”) rather than in absolutes (ie “causes”, “solves”, “fixes”).
2. Pushes one right way to eat.
As comforting as it may feel to be promised a perfect way of eating that will solve all your problems, this is a huge red flag. It’s likely biased based on personal experience rather than an objective report of the data. In reality, there are many different dietary patterns that correlate with reduced risk of chronic disease and improved health outcomes. Eating plenty of plant variety is the common denominator among all of them, with no clear correlations between macronutrient distribution or inclusion or exclusion of animal products. Essentially, there are a lot of ways to eat well and leaves room for your own personal experiences with food.
3. Provides advice without knowing your current self-care patterns or your health history.
This is true even if they seem to have the same health concerns as you do. If they don’t have more information, the advice given is likely anecdotal or too general to be applicable. A good clinician knows that nutrition advice is client-centered, evidenced based, and not based on what worked for them.
4. The advice is heavy on supplements.
Supplements are highly unregulated so cautious use over liberal use is ideal. Supplements should be targeted to your own known deficiencies, possible gaps in nutrition and specific desired outcomes. In addition, just because you take a large dose of a nutrient doesn’t mean it will all be absorbed and used, and could interfere with the absorption of other nutrients. It’s also worth noting that unlike supplementing with essential nutrients where we have a decent understanding of how they works in the body, adaptogens, herbs and nootropics are far less understood .
5. Attempts to vilify one ingredient or food group.
Assessing disease risk or current health status should consider many variables. Nutrition advice specifically geared toward one ingredient or food group without consideration for overall eating patterns is reductive and short-sighted. While the food supply isn’t perfect and many people have questions about food manufacturing, when assessing health we need to look at the clinical significance of overall eating patterns, not individual ingredients. When we get caught up in one or two ingredients or food groups, we lose sight of bigger and more impactful habits, patterns and self-care behaviors.
Use these 5 filters to help you spot bad nutrition advice, and good nutrition advice too! Helpful information will be nuanced, personalized, inclusive and emphasize food over supplements. I hope this helps you feel more confident navigating the world of social media, family conversations and the sea of nutrition opinions.