Kevin Klatt, PhD, RD

If there's one thing social media has taught me, it's to be skeptical of anything that goes viral. One of the most recent articles i've seen going around the facebook/tumblr world is an article, seemingly reposted on a number of different sites, that discusses how strange America is for having to refrigerate their eggs. If you haven't read these articles, see one version here . To summarize them, eggs can become infected with Salmonella on the outside or the inside. Eggs contain a protective covering, called the cuticle, that can prevent Salmonella penetration into the egg. America washes eggs throughout industrial processing, effectively removing the cuticle, and henceforth, the egg's protection. To avoid proliferation of dangerous amounts of Salmonella, we have to refrigerate eggs. This is all weird because other countries, the article claims, don't wash the eggs, so they retain the cuticle and therefore, don't have place eggs in the fridge. The article ...

While finishing my graduate dietetics coursework, i've taken a hiatus from nutrigenomics work and have delved into some breast milk analysis. The whole field of breast milk is extremely interesting, especially from an evolutionary perspective. For some great work on breast milk, from evolutionary perspectives, check out Elizabeth Quinn and Katie Hinde 's work. Elizabeth Quinn recently put out a paper in The Journal of Human Biology, addressing the issue of iron fortification in infant formula (1). Iron is a big area of concern for infant nutrition. Breast milk, the gold standard for infant nutrition, is quite low in iron, and this appears to be relatively unaffected by mother's intake. An infant relies on its own iron stores, that it accumulated during gestation, for the first 6 months of life - one of the many reason's a mother's adequate iron intake is so important throughout pregnancy. Iron is extremely important for normal growth of an infant. But why is ir...

There's a huge debate that goes on, seemingly behind the scenes, regarding who can counsel when it comes to nutrition - for a good read on the issue, see here  and here . Sure, everyone has an opinion on how to eat (because we all eat!), but that opinion can become dangerous when individuals have medical conditions that require specific diets - this is the whole reason there are Registered Dietitians. I have a lot of thoughts on the issue in general, as well as Academy sponsorship by big food, but for now, let's stick to counseling. In the alternative health field, one of the biggest topics to discuss is the controversy over saturated fat and dietary cholesterol. The current dietary recommendations set down by the Institute of Medicine have placed limits on the amount of cholesterol (<300mg) and saturated fat (<7% calories) that should be consumed in the diet. In response to this, the alternative health/low-carb/Paleo/high-fat movements have responded with some evidence...

If you read this blog regularly, i'm highly against obesity shaming. The whole idea that people simply choose to be obese and lack the will power to change ignores a multitude of educational/psych-social/politcal/cultural factors, as well as physiological and genetic susceptbility. It's extremely reductionist to play the calories-in-calories-out blame game. This isn't too say there isn't some level of personal responsibility, but obesity is a multi-factorial issue - as i've blogged about before. A new study (1) recently came out in the New England Journal of Medicine that looked at the incidence of obesity in the United States using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. Taking data from school children from 1998-2007 (about 21000 children were enrolled in the study), early childhood obesity (the age entering kindergarten) was highly predictive of obese status at age 14. About half of the children who were obese at age 14 had been overweight when they were in kin...

I've kept my posts mostly to nutritional sciences related things, but I actually am pretty big advocate and follower of improving the sustainability component of our food system. I had originally intended to go in that direction from a career perspective, but it's quite vexing to be in a field where there's so many thoughts and opinions on what is the most ideal, sustainable food system. Making a sustainable food system is not as simple as being pro-organic, pro-GMO, pro-local, pro-vegetarian, etc.  One thing that I always find interesting, because it's something that nutritional scientists, dietitians, and clinicians can advocate, is reducing meat consumption. A new report (1) put out by the United Nations advocates for reducing consumption of meat by 60% - taking us back to the 1940's meat consumption - not a simple feat. This is far from a simple issue, with some advocates swearing that local meat is entirely sustainable, and others disagree'ing. For heat...