Radical Rodents

A lab without lab rats makes nutrition sciences pseudo.

I was clawing at my eyes. Scratching to relieve the pain. But they kept ballooning. Swelling my eyes shut. The hospital gave a me pill. That tamed the rage inside to relieve the itching, but not the puffiness that remained the fortnight.

I was in 6th or 7th grade when I had that allergic reaction. I was perplexed as to what caused it though my mom speculated it could've been something I ate. I started being more conscious and calculated with my snacking and feasting. Naturally, when I got to university I was very interested in learning about nutrition.

I thought nutrition sciences was the study of how molecules interact with our bodies and how they are digested. But that's the study of biochemistry and metabolism. Nutrition sciences is a study of human eating behaviours published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Behavioural sciences, though they offer their own value, are subject to many limitations. It's difficult to control confounding variables and they produce correlational findings, not causation. Randomized controlled trials, that can lead to conclusions of causation by manipulating one or more variables, is not possible in nutrition science. I can’t create an experimental design to make Mary eat a high cholesterol diet and Stacy a low cholesterol diet to see who dies of cardiovascular disease. Even animal research requires ethical considerations for approval which includes a genuine purpose for the investigation. If pumpkins don't have the risk of killing people or are related to a disease, investigative research to understand the biological activity and benefits of pumpkins will not be approved. Nutrition research is also often funded by industries which skews the findings in their favour. This makes the scope of foods that are researched very limited and their benefits or drawbacks not well researched to make any definitive conclusions about them. The research methods are mostly based on a variety of questionnaires from participants.

These questionnaires can range from asking 'how often did you eat x food group in the last month' to gathering dietary logs. These types of data collection requires quantifying food consumption. Can you tell me how many grams of your dinner you ate last night? Neither could I! For an assignment I had to log a week's worth of my diet which required quantifying how much of everything I ate. We did use a software that had a database of dishes I could pick from and input the quantity I had eaten. But this database didn't have options for malai boti or any other ethnic dishes. Alternatively, I could input the quantity of each ingredient that went into the serving size…

Since nutrition research is based on participant data, the limitations on the data collection process has significant implications on the credibility of the findings. Since there are a lot of variation in dietary habits, it’s hard to isolate single variables that may contribute to disease risks. The demographics of the participants also limits the findings being generalizable for a larger population. If the participants were mostly white females in America, logging Western diet, can the findings of 'what makes a healthy diet' be extrapolated to me, a South Asian female?

I beg to differ. In a biology course, we studied the molecular basis of biological activity, I learned about how cultural diets can affect the expression of genes that are involved in metabolic processes. This is a field of study known as nutrigenomics. This supports that cultural diets shape our biology and therefore our dietary preferences and needs. This makes nutrition behavioural research significantly less generalizable.

The dietary regimes investigated are heavily rooted in Western palatable diets. For example, omega 3 fatty acids are an essential fatty acid which were are indoctrinated to believe solely comes from fish. The ocean is a major food source for Europeans since its surrounded by water, but landlocked countries wouldn't traditionally eat fish due to lack of accessibility which would also make fish less palatable to them (me). I think it's very narrow minded to think that without eating fish populations are suffering from nutrient deficiencies, when populations have been eating a sans fish diet for centuries. I was listening to an episode of The Huberman Lab, and discovered that there are actually many alternative sources of omega 3s and fish does not need to be and essential part of diet.

Dietary Reference Intake for macronutrients: fats, carbs, and protein.

A major research endeavour in nutrition is creating Dietary Reference Intakes¹ which quantifies the amount of micro and macronutrients we need to be consuming. It looks like the table above and contains a minimum quantity requirement for each micro and macronutrient. I think it's extremely unrealistic to check off a todo list of fifty micronutrient on a daily basis, to be "healthy".

"Everyone should be treated with herbs from his own country." - Hippocrates²

When someone is sick and need to make dietary adjustments thereby, I think science from biochemistry sources can be reliable source for dietary recommendations. But for the average healthy person, preventative care through diet is much more practical through cultural and religious dietary traditions.

Overall, nutrition science research lacks credibility because of the significance of faulty research methods. It’s also heavily biased towards Western/European diet and investigative research to highlight the benefits of Eastern diets is not researched. Health recommendations also always serve the Western palate. Risk of disease development is also multifaceted and an exploration of its own. In this discussion, I highlighted some of the biases and credibility gaps in nutritional science research and hope to inspire you to reconnect to traditional ways of eating for preventative health practices.

In an upcoming post, I will explore some ideas of what makes a healthy diet, Insha'Allah! Until then, I would love to know, what’s favourite dietary health practice, mine is drinking green tea!

1. Institute of Medicine. (2006). Summary Tables, Dietary Reference Intakes. In Dietary Reference Intakes The Essential Guide to Nutrient Requirements (pp. 529–545). essay, The National Academies Press.

2. As-Suyuti, J.-D. A.-R., & Thomson, A. (1999). The Practice of Medicine. In As-Suyuti’s Medicine of the Prophet (pp. 11–12). essay, Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd.

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