14 April 2008

Nutrition Schmience

Nutrition science seems sillier by the day. From a BBC article:
[UPenn Researchers] wrote: "There is no clear evidence of benefit from drinking increased amounts of water.

"Although we wish we could demolish all of the urban myths found on the Internet regarding the benefits of supplemental water ingestion, we concede there is also no clear evidence of lack of benefit.

"In fact, there is simply a lack of evidence in general."
I read a fun book by Marion Nestle titled What to Eat. "Not enough evidence" is the general rule. Even about water!

Can we just recognize that the human body is incredibly complicated? How does it handle salt? Probably in a way I can understand after a few hours reading. But how does its handling of salt interact with its handling of all the other things you eat? And how you slept? And if you exercised recently? And and and...

The nutritional idea that seems right to me is: eat what we evolved eating. That's probably what my body is good at handling. I have no idea what that means I should eat though.

I like blanched green beans.

2 comments:

Nicolas Frisby said...

Even better: "Goldfarb's advice: Just drink when you're thirsty."

Emily Claire said...

Marion Nestle's book is fantastic. Also, Michael Pollen's book "In Defense of Food" has a perfect motto: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.