What is a "Healthy" food? A look at Nutritionism.

I've recently done some reading on the concept of "Nutritionism". Nutritionism is the idea that the sum of all the nutrients in foods (fat, protein, calcium, etc) make up the nutritional value of that food. Although most nutrition professionals are well aware that there are many influences that affect the nutritional content of a food, no doubt, this is how many nutritionists and physicians base their recommendations.

All this got me to thinking, what is a "healthy" food?

As someone who firmly believes that the health of the planet is directly connected to the health of the people living on it, I believe that a healthy food one that is also healthy for the planet, or at least does minimal damage in being produced, harvested and transported (ie: local, organic foods). On the flip side, there are many health agencies who will not recommend anything until there is years and years of scientific evidence to back it up. Of course, this is definitely good in many ways. But I have found that this often leads to two things:

1) By the time sufficient evidence comes out to convince them to make a recommendation, they can be way behind the times.

2) They often adopt the "innocent until proven guilty" frame of mind, meaning, they will say such things as "pesticide residues found on food have not been proven to be harmful, so don't worry about it" rather than saying "So far, evidence hasn't shown them to be harmful" and letting people make their own decisions regarding whether or not that's a risk they want to take.

Unfortunately, I think it's impossible to be a true expert in such a dynamic field, and anyone who thinks they are is fooling themselves. By "true" expert I mean someone who is all knowing and has all the answers. New research is coming out daily, and there are always so many things to consider, it's impossible to be an expert in every situation. Furthermore, expertise is all relative. The person who knows the most of the best information available today is who we, as a society, consider the expert.

In researching for this post, I came across this statement regarding Michael Pollan's take on nutritionism (from Wikipedia):

"They key to Pollan's understanding of nutritionism is "the widely shared but unexamined assumption ... that the key to understanding food is indeed the nutrient." Since nutrients are invisible, it is now necessary to rely on nutrition experts to make food choices. Because science has an incomplete understanding of how food affects the human body, Pollan argues, relying solely on information regarding individual nutrients has led people and policy makers to repeatedly make poor decision relating to nutrition. Pollan blames nutritionism for many of the health problems relating to diet in the Western World today. He compares Nutritionism to a religion, relying on "priests" (nutritional scientists and journalists) to interpret the latest orthodoxy for the masses. Like a many religions, nutritionism has divided the world into good and evil components, although what is good or evil can change dramatically with time."

But the fact is that people don't want to be told "We don't know" - they want answers. And in spite of the many flaws in the scientific method, it's the best we have and has led to some really great advances in medical and nutritional history, and so, should not be discarded completely. So why go to a dietitian after all this? Again, the point is that expertise is relative. Just like any profession you see (a physician, stock broker, etc), a knowledgeable dietitian will be able to present you with the best and latest in the evidence available, and help you make sense of it enough to make a decision that you're comfortable with.

One question I get often that makes me cringe is "Is (enter food here) bad for me?". When thinking in pure nutritionism terms, there are SO many components that go in to a food, there is no black and white answer. In some ways nutrition is more of an art than a science. It's extremely difficult to say whether some foods are "good for you" or not (except for highly processed food-like products - that's a no-brainer) without considering the diet as a whole. Is that butter you put on your toast bad? Again, it's all relative. It depends if it's the only butter you use that day or is you go through a block every few days. It depends if you weigh 130lbs or 330lbs. It depends if it's salted and you have high blood pressure. It depends if you have a cholesterol problem... and on, and on and on. A dietitian is really the best thing to help you look at all the considerations that will decide whether your diet is healthy or not.

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