If you can't rant on your own blog, where can you rant, really?
What is the deal with everyone trying to say one food is evil? Goodness knows it changes every day, depending who you ask. This internet nutritionist says wheatgrass will cure cancer, this one says milk will give you cancer, and this one says we should all be vegetarian.
Let's get one thing straight, first. What's the diff between a dietitian and a nutritionist? Surely it's the same thing, you say? WRONG. Why? Dietitian is a protected term - you have to have completed a full degree and an accredited internship. You need to know your stuff! This is not to say all nutritionists are full of rubbish - I know multiple people with nutrition degrees without the dietitian designation who know mountains of good info. However, if you're chatting up a 'nutritionist', for all you know, they could just be someone with their foodsafe certificate. There are quite a few (QUITE a few) who took some sort of 3-6 month holistic nutrition course, or perhaps even 2 years, if you'd really like to stretch it out. After 7 years of school, and a bunch of people telling me how smart I am, I still cannot fathom so many things about the human body and nutrition and how they relate. I'm learning every day, but you just can't know it all in that time.
Six months, you say? Please. Again, not to say said nutritionist couldn't have some good stuff to say, even after only 6 months. It's amazing what exposure can do and inspire in people! But a lot of people like to give advice that sells.
Know what sells? (*cue eyeroll* 'Yes, April, fine, go ahead.")
Insta-solutions. What's easier than picking one or ten evil foods and cutting it out in your diet? If you're cutting out, say, eggs, you have the glorious knowledge that you can go eat McDonald's till your liver croaks - because it won't croak right? It's only EGGS that are evil. All that processed stuff? No dairy! I'm good!
And for all you gluten-nuts out there (and no,. I don't mean you, gluten-intolerant folks, or even people just giving gluten-free living a try *nods to my sister-in law*), butter is gluten-free, generally. Does that mean you're going to fill up on that?
Now, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm slightly opinionated. I may be proved wrong about the whole gluten thing one day. But nothing gets my back up more than people trying to share their opinions without a solid scientific basis. And no, I DON'T mean a news release from CBS or the Vancouver Sun or whatever the hell. I want articles from PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS. Just because a doctor on the internet (credentials, please!) says that acai will add 20 years to your life, think about it! Aren't doctors just as susceptible to fads as any other human? And aren't we all really amazing at extrapolating data that applies to us personally (e.g. I'm allergic to hamsters) and using it on other people ('Hey, don't eat hamsters, pretty sure they're toxic.)
I recently scampered away from a debate on facebook (Hah, I know right? Someone is WRONG on FACEBOOK. How can this be?) about whether or not milk is evil. The person who disagreed with my saying that milk is NOT evil said they had looked and looked and looked for info that milk isn't evil and couldn't find it ANYwhere. I scarpared, because I'm starting to learn that stubborn people is stubborn (I would know, I'm one of them.) One of the sad things is, they may have a point. It's HARD to find info, especially if you aren't a university student. Being in my last year, I still get access to every flipping journal index and database that UBC has to offer. (LOVE!) But I wouldn't be able to even see half of these things if I didn't have said access. Ovid, EBSCO, Pubmed - where would I be without you?
But here's a few:
'A dietary pattern that incorporates higher low-fat dairy products may lower the risk of type 2 diabetes in middle-aged or older women'
Liu et al, 2006. A Prospective Study of Dairy Intake and the Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in Women. Diabetes Care, 29 (7).
'Dairy consumption is inversely associated with the risk of having metabolic syndrome.'
'Dietary patterns characterized by higher dairy intake, especially low-fat dairy intake, may lower the risk of type 2 diabetes in men.'
Choi et al, 2005. Dairy Consumption and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Men. Archives of Internal Medicine, 165 (9).
Now what does this prove, you ask? (or in some people's cases, ARGUE VORACIOUSLY.) Nothing. It's a bunch of correlations, not causation. This may all be proved wrong later. There are SO many confounding factors. I could also find a bunch of articles saying how milk ISN'T great. Or a whole bunch with no conclusive results! All I'm asking is, STOP with the preaching about how this food and that food is wrong and 'OH, you still eat THAT?' I may have no actual concrete proof that whatever food is good for you, but you have only likely an equal amount of proof to say it's evil. So stop pushing the message as if we already know for sure!
And what about real-life confounding factors? Are you going to tell some lovely old thing with osteoporosis to stop drinking milk and pop a bunch of vitamin D? (Think it through. If her diet is poor because she doesn't have much appetite but likes milk, she'll maybe slowly starve to death but have healthy bones? How is this helpful? What if the person is vegetarian but hates tofu and beans? Where do you recommend they get their protein? Protein supplements or dairy?)
Ok, so the end of this rant really comes down to - eat how you like! If it makes you feel good to be vegan or gluten free or whatever, sweet. Do it. Tell everyone how much you like it! But DON'T go around making false claims or listening to other people's false claims that such and such is toxic. Ask for their credentials. Better yet, ask for their sources! It's amazing what people take out of context. Read this review of Wheat Belly. A couple of my fellow interns spent months looking up his sources. Turns out, this dude is really good at picking and choosing what info he'd like to highlight.
We all know this info changes like mad. Just think about the butter/margarine debate. Pretty sure it's gone both ways twice each in the last 10 years :P. By eating a balanced diet with a bit of everything (except the really obvious stuff - nitrate-packed processed meat burned to charcoal, anyone?), you won't be stuck with a fridge and belly full of rice cakes when they decide they're the latest carcinogens in a few years.
If you actually made it through this whole post, you've earned this bit of hilarity:
What NOT to look for in your nutritionist :-)
(Just a note, one of the somewhat ironic things about this point is I'm quite lactose-intolerant and grew up with an allergy to the milk protein. I drink soy milk and generally limit dairy, or it gets ugly. I argue heatedly in defence of milk mostly because I hate to hear any poor defenceless food attacked without good reason.)
