How can nutritional science be made more accurate?

[cookderosa]

My over-simplified assessment is that the biggest problem with nutrition is that everybody eats.
Since everybody eats, it puts the topic in a unique situation for everyone to generate an opinion about food and nutrition - which means everyone with a website gets an opinion. And though you're right that it is physiology and biochemistry, most of what you'll read is generated by people without any knowledge of science, and the real sale comes from selling their spew to people who don't know science either, so it's easy.

I wrote a paper in grad school about The Blue Food Category. It was satire, we were studying nutritional sociology and behaviors/history of. But if you look at SCIENCE-BASED nutrition, nobody cares. Science does a terrible job at reaching the people and when they do, they make the second mistake of believing that people eat based on science. (X calories, Y protein, etc.) This is where dietitians fall short. If you've ever worked with RDs, they are what I'd call "left brained" and very focused on numbers. Facts and stats confuse people and make it hard to remember or learn. Most people don't behave / modify behavior because they learned some facts.

But if you follow the popular culture eating / dieting / consumer trends, they are very "right brained" and appeal to social behaviors and dreams. People eat based on their preferences, cultural norms, emotional feelings associated with eating, joy, etc. and people also use food as a way to control others (ex. parents at mealtime) or as a way of controlling those around them (through disordered eating). Finally, people use food as a political weapon (GMOs, animal rights, buy local) to advertise their position.

I went to culinary school right out of high school, so I've been a foodie since day 1. I'm all about the meal, the event, the social, the joy, the memories, the flavors. And then studying nutrition as a science was very different- it's all about the chemistry, biochemistry, physiology (dry but important). I found that both are firmly planted in their own worlds and give little credibility to the other. IMO, the successful approach will be the intersection of hard science and social science.