There are probably some recommendations that would "work" (in a strictly nutritional sense) for mostly everyone: "eat a substantial and varied amount of fruits and vegetables" will rarely be bad advice. In my view, the challenge of dietary recommendations (beyond the limited scientific understanding of many health effects and individual variability) appears when zooming into more specific advice and a more general concept of "working", i.e., how to make dietary changes that "stick", according to your socioeconomic circumstances and preferences. I follow a similar philosophy as you regarding meal choices (eyeballing nutrient content¹), and I think it works for me as a "numbers person", but would that work for anyone? Is there even a viable alternative?
Some governments in Western Europe are pushing Nutriscore (a grade based on quantization of a linear formula on macros and salt), and supposedly there is some evidence for it, but it just feels wrong to me. Even if you don't consider the strategic / adversarial implications and the different dimensions of nutrition (overall calorie intake, sodium content, proteins, micronutrients, fiber...), "nutritional adequacy" is a property of a complete diet, not a property of any individual product. If we put the optimization-tinted glasses on, all those terms are closer to constraints than additive terms in the objective function, so the actual marginal value of a given step depends on the current point, but let's try to avoid reasoning about hedonic Lagrange multipliers. I feel Nutriscore is neither a sufficient replacement for actual nutritional knowledge nor a necessary one at all, even after tweaking out all the nonsense². If you search for consumer advice in the context of Nutriscore, you are presented with a number of rules ("you should only compare foods/beverages within the same family", "good grades do not mean eat unbounded amounts", "prefer fresh produce") that undermine its pretense of simplicity (arguably the main selling point over general nutritional advice).
Coming back to the question of generality: assuming we have clearly defined nutritional goals, there's the question of how easy would it be for a specific person to swap some meals in or out depending on tastes, financial and "temporal" budgets, cultural contexts³, convenience, satiety... Here, I feel that there's a lot of interesting stuff that could be said, though advice along those lines will probably have to trascend the purely nutritional aspects. Ultimately, I think effective advice likely has to combine some basic principles (which macronutrient volumes and micronutrients are important for specific health/performance outcomes, and which foods contain them) with more practical suggestions that highlight potential options for adjusting your dietary habits.
¹ To be honest, I wonder if you can get any significant benefit from doing Excel-tracking at all! It's easy to find "nutritional content per 100g" tables, but how big are the errors bars and variability of those numbers? How accurately can you judge weights when not cooking at home? Are your actual macro targets exactly what some linear rules of thumb tell you? Surely a systematic approach is a big improvement over nothing, but it would surprise me if it was not in the zone of diminishing returns on precision. Some people would probably find themselves more comfortable with putting stuff on an app or spreadsheet, though.
² Early implementations featured stuff like "D-grade olive oil and Iberian ham", which invited some turmoil here in Spain (especially when compared to A/B-grade cookies or sodas), though apparently they kept adjusting categories and coefficients to mitigate counterproductive advice. At that point, however, what's the point of adding formulas and grades if they are adjusted until the results are the desired ones (i.e., the "expert consensus") that you already received?
³ One example that comes to mind: pulses/legumes. Quite useful from a nutritional PoV, as they are provide fiber, micronutrients, satiety and proteins (with all the aminoacid composition caveats that are not an issue for most people because of grains) without major drawbacks, but their popularity varies markedly around the world. Beans and rice is foundational in Latin America, and bean/chickpea/lentil stews are a staple in traditional Spanish food (as well as other Mediterranean countries). People coming from those gastronomic traditions (or people more curious about "world food") will probably have an easier time incorporating servings of those kinds of dishes if you have to, say, replace "pasta as a starter" with options beyond a bland salad.
I talked about some of the issues you raised here in today's post. I totally agree that the whole program feels off. People can usually figure out what to eat just fine! And most "malnutrition" that occurs today comes from poverty, not bad dietary choices.
But obesity is not the same as malnutrition, and that seems to be the most vexing topic in the US. What do you think the main concerns are for European regulators?
So much to say on this but I cannot understand/buy/make sense of the 1g/body weight of protein entirely. As with everything fitness, it is overkill and completely at odds with reality. There are even crazier apps to manage macros and the whole obsession with it is senseless (of course, sour grapes for this slightly protein-intolerant fitness nerd) but it is also very interesting. More later as one preps for first day of class here in the valley of the sun.
And I agree with you that the 1g/body weight is likely overkill. But it has worked for me? I can tolerate that diet better than a diet with a lot of carbs. I find myself more full throughout the day on this diet. And it's lower calorie than what I used to eat as well.
We all have to find what works for ourselves even though there's no perfect answer, right?
There are probably some recommendations that would "work" (in a strictly nutritional sense) for mostly everyone: "eat a substantial and varied amount of fruits and vegetables" will rarely be bad advice. In my view, the challenge of dietary recommendations (beyond the limited scientific understanding of many health effects and individual variability) appears when zooming into more specific advice and a more general concept of "working", i.e., how to make dietary changes that "stick", according to your socioeconomic circumstances and preferences. I follow a similar philosophy as you regarding meal choices (eyeballing nutrient content¹), and I think it works for me as a "numbers person", but would that work for anyone? Is there even a viable alternative?
Some governments in Western Europe are pushing Nutriscore (a grade based on quantization of a linear formula on macros and salt), and supposedly there is some evidence for it, but it just feels wrong to me. Even if you don't consider the strategic / adversarial implications and the different dimensions of nutrition (overall calorie intake, sodium content, proteins, micronutrients, fiber...), "nutritional adequacy" is a property of a complete diet, not a property of any individual product. If we put the optimization-tinted glasses on, all those terms are closer to constraints than additive terms in the objective function, so the actual marginal value of a given step depends on the current point, but let's try to avoid reasoning about hedonic Lagrange multipliers. I feel Nutriscore is neither a sufficient replacement for actual nutritional knowledge nor a necessary one at all, even after tweaking out all the nonsense². If you search for consumer advice in the context of Nutriscore, you are presented with a number of rules ("you should only compare foods/beverages within the same family", "good grades do not mean eat unbounded amounts", "prefer fresh produce") that undermine its pretense of simplicity (arguably the main selling point over general nutritional advice).
Coming back to the question of generality: assuming we have clearly defined nutritional goals, there's the question of how easy would it be for a specific person to swap some meals in or out depending on tastes, financial and "temporal" budgets, cultural contexts³, convenience, satiety... Here, I feel that there's a lot of interesting stuff that could be said, though advice along those lines will probably have to trascend the purely nutritional aspects. Ultimately, I think effective advice likely has to combine some basic principles (which macronutrient volumes and micronutrients are important for specific health/performance outcomes, and which foods contain them) with more practical suggestions that highlight potential options for adjusting your dietary habits.
¹ To be honest, I wonder if you can get any significant benefit from doing Excel-tracking at all! It's easy to find "nutritional content per 100g" tables, but how big are the errors bars and variability of those numbers? How accurately can you judge weights when not cooking at home? Are your actual macro targets exactly what some linear rules of thumb tell you? Surely a systematic approach is a big improvement over nothing, but it would surprise me if it was not in the zone of diminishing returns on precision. Some people would probably find themselves more comfortable with putting stuff on an app or spreadsheet, though.
² Early implementations featured stuff like "D-grade olive oil and Iberian ham", which invited some turmoil here in Spain (especially when compared to A/B-grade cookies or sodas), though apparently they kept adjusting categories and coefficients to mitigate counterproductive advice. At that point, however, what's the point of adding formulas and grades if they are adjusted until the results are the desired ones (i.e., the "expert consensus") that you already received?
³ One example that comes to mind: pulses/legumes. Quite useful from a nutritional PoV, as they are provide fiber, micronutrients, satiety and proteins (with all the aminoacid composition caveats that are not an issue for most people because of grains) without major drawbacks, but their popularity varies markedly around the world. Beans and rice is foundational in Latin America, and bean/chickpea/lentil stews are a staple in traditional Spanish food (as well as other Mediterranean countries). People coming from those gastronomic traditions (or people more curious about "world food") will probably have an easier time incorporating servings of those kinds of dishes if you have to, say, replace "pasta as a starter" with options beyond a bland salad.
I talked about some of the issues you raised here in today's post. I totally agree that the whole program feels off. People can usually figure out what to eat just fine! And most "malnutrition" that occurs today comes from poverty, not bad dietary choices.
But obesity is not the same as malnutrition, and that seems to be the most vexing topic in the US. What do you think the main concerns are for European regulators?
So much to say on this but I cannot understand/buy/make sense of the 1g/body weight of protein entirely. As with everything fitness, it is overkill and completely at odds with reality. There are even crazier apps to manage macros and the whole obsession with it is senseless (of course, sour grapes for this slightly protein-intolerant fitness nerd) but it is also very interesting. More later as one preps for first day of class here in the valley of the sun.
Good luck with class!
And I agree with you that the 1g/body weight is likely overkill. But it has worked for me? I can tolerate that diet better than a diet with a lot of carbs. I find myself more full throughout the day on this diet. And it's lower calorie than what I used to eat as well.
We all have to find what works for ourselves even though there's no perfect answer, right?
Good luck with class!