- Topics
- Aerospace
- Animals
- Anthro and Archaeology
- Bio and Medicine
- Brain and Behavior
- Business and Economy
- Computers and Electronics
- Education and Outreach
- Energy and Environment
- Geoscience
- Internet and Communication
- Media and Entertainment
- Nanotech, Chem and Materials
- Physics and Numbers
- Security and Defense
- Software
- Space
- Transportation
- Reader Blogs
- Shameless Commerce
- Register/Login
News Flash: Don't Chew Asbestos!
There are two main differences between "practical" and "impractical" science: (1) Practical science gets more publicity because it's easier to explain in 2 minutes, and (2) Practical science is only useful if people use it and listen to it, while impractical science just has to promise to be useful somewhere down the road. You can make a list of which fields are practical and which are not, but allow me to start you off.
Nutrition and Food Science is a prime example of practical science. It's easy to explain, it makes good fodder for early-morning news shows, and it applies to everyone in the world because everyone in the world eats something at least once in their lives. Studying food is a wonderful thing to do.
There seems to be one minor snag in the food science field, a snag which was totally unexpected: sometimes an entire field can get stuck in a creative rut.
For example, take a top article posted on the NIH website. It describes the result of a decade's worth of work, interviewing thousands of people and studying their health and food intake. They found that there were certain foods that contributed to a vague, newly-named state called "metabolic syndrome." Ever heard of it? Probably not, because it's just a phrase describing a mixture of problems, like hypertension, diabetes, and other risk factors for stroke and heart attack. Guess what they found? Fast foods and foods high in fat and cholesterol, were positively correlated with metabollic syndrome, whereas fruits, breads, and nuts were not correlated.
Stop the presses! This is going to be HUGE! (And so are we!)
The problem with nutrition scientists is that once they explained to us fifty years ago that good foods made us healthy and bad foods made us die, they really didn't have much else to say. They could get into the physical relationship we have with food, but then they'd have to become biochemists and doctors, and there's no way that they could afford the re-training on their salaries. So the only thing that they have to do is to repeatedly find new ways of describing the effects of cholesterol on our hardened arteries. It has to be hard on them.
But here's the caveat: as described above, the people of the United States generally haven't listened to nutritionists, and so obesity, diabetes, stroke and heart disease are prevalent and on the rise. The second rule of practicality has been broken. Herein lies the true mission of a food scientist: not to find something new, but to find the same thing as everyone else, only LOUDER.
I admit that I could be wrong about this. Perhaps there are some venues to nutrition that have yet to be explored. I haven't been reading the weekly diet advice that I see in supermarket magazines, so I don't know if they're saying anything staggering. And I'll grant that the whole "bean sprouts are bad" thing threw me for a loop, as did the whole "the antioxidants in wine may overcome the fact that it is also a long-term liver toxin" news. It's too bad there aren't any studies on second-hand eating, because that could break the field wide open. (Second hand eating is when you have to repeatedly ride in a car that smells thickly of McDonalds' french fries).
I therefore salute and simultaneously pity the brave men and women of nutrition science, who have so little left to contribute but so much that needs to be repeated. Unlike other fields, there's no hope of going back and finding something that "makes us rethink everything we thought we knew about ______". That's not how science was meant to be.
Submitted by Renaisauce on Sat, 2008-03-01 16:20.
- Renaisauce's blog
- Printer-friendly version
- 1355 reads
Ha.
You who rally about names supporting a "theoretical nutrition" label! Awesome!
:) I kid of course.
I believe it would be possible to do what you suggest - and my fervent reading of scifi books from the 50's makes me hope it will be possible _soon_. I also fear the path to get there will be through failed products and an industry bent on exacting a fee, potentially outweighing any benefits.
In the end, when looking at the systems of animals (us included), there are so many existing unknowns that I have a hard time believing that our current understanding should allow us to even experiment with people in this area.
The generation before us accepted on faith the promise of science based food and we have grown up with them in our lives - I wonder that it was premature given that even now we publish studies contradicting the effects of wine...(or coffee, or fat, etc..) Not an alarmist, just a person who wonders aloud. :)
Eric
Hold it...
Don't stand down quite yet, although I think we've come to a wonderful understanding.
You said that any lab product is far riskier then a natural one. I know what you mean by that, but it raises what I think to be an interesting question:
If you were a serious nutritionist who knows pretty much everything that we need to be nominally healthy, shouldn't it be possible to invent a brand new kind of food that (a) has everything you need in a meal while (b) doesn't taste like yeast-covered tofu? I'm not talking about a single food- I'm talking about a Waist-Watcher's variety of related foods that would be easier produce then regular farm-grown stuff, have fewer risky elements, be much healthier and even taste better?
Agriculture is subject to nature, disease, chemicals, increases our carbon footprint (which is why biofuels aren't catching) and causes a mess of other problems. So could we, in theory, break off our addiction to agriculture at the same time we break off our addiction to oil?
I don't know that anyone would try this, or ever get the money for it, and I would be as suspicious as you about something replacing normal, Earth-grown food in my diet. But if there is such a field as theoretical nutrition, shouldn't it be possible? What if our grandkids in forty years are heard to say things like, "Grandpa, did you really eat dead animals? What? AND things that you grew from dirt?"
By the way, I want to say that I totally respect and support the farming industry.
Ok.. Your Point
is actually proved, in most parts, by the article and my comments - so I stand down. :)
I would venture any lab produced product is far riskier than a natural one - but really, nothing can beat honest food choices and calorie restriction.
Eric
Re: Really
Eric,
Great article and good response. But I still stick to my point. Most of these changes have to do with nutritionists debunking the claims of industry (margarine) or restating something similar, rather then experiencing any creative breakthroughs like those that occur in other sciences. As the article points out, humans have been doing OK figuring out how to eat in the past, so is the only reason that we have nutritionists to rage against the machine?
I, too, remember the food groups. It started as a square. By the time I was in middle school it was a pyramid, and by the time I was out of high school it was something in 4 dimensions. But was that science, or just kind of a subjective reshifting?
I don't remember meat being promoted in large quantities, but I had moderate parents. I did live through the Carb wars, (unless they haven't ended, in which case I'm not sure that I have).
So let me ask a different question. Is there anything considered safe to eat right now that maybe isn't safe ( a la margarine)? And is there anything that we should clearly be eating but that is not at all part of the American diet?
Really? Nothing changed?
So, I remember many changes - and I am not yet in my 50's - here are a few examples:
1. Margarine
Was: Way better than butter
Now: Actually worse, unless no trans-fat.
2. Four Food Groups
Was: THE standard
Now: Replaced by "A Pattern for Daily Food Choices"
3. Meat:
Was: Essential and large part of a healthy meal
Now: High in fat, better if portions are small
4. etc..
My favorite article and writer on this subject:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?n=Top/R...
Eric
The Challenge
I believe that one can never be too hard on consumers...unless it's me doing the consuming.
I don't necessarily want to start a discussion on the reasons that people live unhealthy lifestyles. I think we all understand that to a degree, and it's more of a psychological question. I will say that I think blaming advertising is kind of a cop-out. People know exactly what they're eating, and they know that they shouldn't be eating it. Have you ever tried to tell someone that something is unhealthy?
You: "Hey, you should be eating this carrot stick instead of that extra-large Italian sausage."
Their response "I will crush you into dust if you tell me that again."
Here's my question for nutritionists. If you are one, please answer. Do you see your core research changing at all in the nest ten years? Is your entire field funded to examine each new food, or to do epidemiological surveys of how fat Americans are now as opposed to last year? Or are there legitimately new frontiers to explore, new facts about nutrition that we don't know yet? In other words is there anything in nutrition science that is unclear?
If not, shouldn't the entire field of nutrition science become a corporation that tries to make healthy foods at the same price and the same satisfaction as unhealthy foods? Are you at the point where there your job is less science and more advertising crusade?
There are conflicting nutritional messages
Good article, but I think the author is overly hard on both consumers and serious nutritionists. People are constantly being bombarded with advertisements pushing them to eat everything from sugar-saturated breakfast cereal to fat saturated snacks and fast foods. No wonder nutritionists have to shout as loud as they can just to counter all the bad information people are being manipulated with.
Nutritionsts are constrained
Nutritionsts are constrained by a profit and power driven system.
Tips I thought of http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Tips-for-Living/
Addendum
I just realized that there were actually postings on this very blog site about metabolic syndrome in the last 3 months. You might have read those articles, in which case you have heard of it. My apologies to the informed.
Post new comment