The Nutrition Grouch
The weight loss industry is, has been, and always will be a dumpster fire. People like to say health & wellness (of which weight loss is a part of) is “broken” or full of “misinformation” but that is being too generous because it implies that some of it is good or that it is actually fixable. It is damaged beyond repair. If it were possible, I would burn it to the ground and start over.
While it is impractical to try to summarize what’s wrong with the industry in one podcast description, my premise is this: there is a truly astronomical amount of information that neither our media nor our professionals are able to communicate to you in a meaningful way without losing all context, applicability to real life, and/or the ability to see how all of the pieces fit together.
The media should just stop covering health & wellness because their soundbites explain nothing and are little more than headlines and talking points. They may raise awareness but not understanding, leading to the illusion of explanatory depth. Academics actually know what they are talking about and could help educate us but are too busy with their work and only some are engaged with the public. Most academics look down on and laugh at the quacks and zealots in the field but it’s the quacks and zealots that have the real power.
Businesses do not have the right people in place (PhDs or medical professionals) to drive product and service development (that’s left to the MBAs). After the brand is established, the number one rule is that you must protect and promote the brand no matter how myopic, self-serving, or unimportant that brand is. Healthcare is for the (already) sick and public health is so surface level.
When it comes to their health, the public is lazy. They want the most entertaining, convenient, and positive information available, even if it is at the expense of achieving their goals. Hard work, I think not. Let me take the path of least resistance and “do it on the side”. There’s no reason for real change.
Instead of being stuck in pedaling the news of the day, disconnected factoids and tidbits, overly reductionist, cliché, idealistic, magic cures, easy fixes, secrets, tips, tricks, hacks, fads, gimmicks, cherry-picked, binary, good/bad, flashy, insanely optimistic, exaggerated, fantasy land, sunshine and rainbows, theoretical, testimonial based weight loss information -- let’s come up with a more comprehensive, systematic, sustainable, realistic, semi-automated, results-oriented, pragmatic approach to weight loss with a slice of common sense.
I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time (years and decades) thinking about the thousands of nuances of weight loss (just Google Energy Balance Nutrition Consulting, The Paper Database, or The Science of Dieting). I’ve also spent thousands of hours trying to understand why the health & wellness field isn’t actually science based despite the information being readily available.
I am so fed up and exhausted by it all. It is so broken that on many days I want to say forget it. I’m done with this. It can’t be fixed. I’m a smart motivated guy that can take my talents elsewhere (LeBron). But something keeps drawing me back. It’s like a sickness or a bad relationship. I just can’t get out of it. At my core, it’s who I am. In this podcast I want to offer you truly science-based weight loss advice, critiques of the weight loss industry/diet culture, and thoughts on my experiences and failings in the profession. And with that, I bring you The Nutrition Grouch.
The Nutrition Grouch
48: What Will Weight Loss Advice in 2035 Look Like?
The world, technology, and the pace of our lives seems to move faster and faster each year. Your life not that long ago is different in so many ways from the one you’re living today. But what about the food you eat? Has that changed? To any casual social media observer, dietary advice and what you’re supposed to eat seems to change every day.
And yet, dietary advice has barely budged in the last 40 years! Starting in 1980, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) have encouraged Americans to limit saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, alcohol, and yes, excess sugar.
In today’s episode, The Nutrition Grouch talks about how the low-carbohydrate advocates rail against the DGAs as being too carbohydrate based, yet their wish to make the DGAs more fat and protein based are historically, environmentally, health, and budgetarily impractical.
Overly reductionist scientific factoids and tidbits are great for producing unlimited social media content but lack the big picture programming, interconnectedness, and nuance, housed Ato Z in one location, required for successful lifestyle change and optimal wellness.
And finally, the Grouch wishes we could burn all of health & wellness down and start over, beginning anew with only those who meet a minimum bar of competence. But he knows that won’t happen because marketing, persuasion, and entertainment are what drives nutrition, not cold hard facts and science.
Weight loss advice in 2035 will probably look a lot like it looks in 2025. The 5 Universal Laws of Weight Loss, Your Behavioral Obesity Risk Score (BORS), The 3 and Only 3 Ways to Cut Calories, and Nutrition Rules and Decision Fatigue will remain pillars of any good lifestyle management plan. There are no magic cures, quick fixes, or even science (outside of GLP-1s) coming to save us.
Some of the topics in today’s episode include:
- 1980: the first edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) (3:27)
- The 7 dietary guidelines of 1980 (3:50)
- The 4 dietary guidelines of 2020 – 2025 (4:13)
- The DGAs have NEVER promoted eating sugar (5:28)
- It’s easier to reduce saturated fat than it is to reduce carbohydrate (8:12)
- It’s completely impractical for everyone to eat low carb (8:54)
- Food labeling is so deceptive (and yet within the rules) (10:58)
- When fad diets become part of your personal identity (14:01)
- Mainstream, regular diet advice is BORING! (16:34)
- Why are we obese? Occam’s razor: too many calories (17:24)
- Keeping the nutrition waters muddy is advantageous to most (22:27)
- Why social media cannot and will never work for nutrition education (23:24)
- People are ok with being lied to if it makes them feel safe/ok (28:32)
- In dieting, nothing is ever new, everything is just recycled (30:09)
- All of nutrition can be viewed through one of two lenses/camps (32:45)
- Exercising cells in a flask is not exercise (36:48)
- I hate supplements, especially in grocery stores (40:10)
- An endless amount of overly reductionist nutrition advice (42:18)
- Who is best at giving nutrition advice? (43:52)
- Timeless nutrition advice (49:32)
- Blow up health & wellness and start over from scratch (54:22)
- Marketing and entertainment will always dominate nutrition (56:17)
- The ENORMOUS DANGER of non expert persuasive speech (58:55)