Kevin Klatt, PhD, RD

The Dietitians of Canada's Practice-Based Evidence in Nutrition recently posted a blog titled " Nutritional Genomics in the Dietetics Curriculum - How Far Have We Come? ". The post summed up some recent research suggesting that dietetics professionals and students don't feel confident that they have a strong knowledge base regarding nutritional genomics, but are eager to learn more! This finding comes at a time when the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics' Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition and Dietetics has released their draft Future Education Model Accreditation Standards, highlighting the need for an understanding of the basic concepts of nutritional genomics. As the field moves forward and needs to teach nutritional genomics/critically evaluate the field, it's important to have relevant resources to understand the basics. Below are a few resources which might help! If you have any questions about nutritional genomics or topics in molecular nu...

A few folks reached out to me to ask if I'd seen the recent JAMA Internal Medicine piece on the Sugar Industry's influence of nutrition science back in the 1960's. Several publications have covered the topic, some fair, some oversimplifying the situation, few adding sufficient context - for a roundup of prominent links, see the following:  1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5  , 6 . Most of the links and published commentaries either directly or implicitly state that the Sugar Research Foundation (SRF) paid researchers to think in some way and write research for them - alas, the nature of the files uncovered can't confirm such a relationship; the review's authors even note this in their limitation section: "There is no direct evidence that the sugar industry wrote or changed the NEJM review manuscript; the evidence that the industry shaped the review’s conclusions is circumstantial". Before I mention any context that I think is relevant, let's start off by that t...

In Ian Leslie's 'The Sugar Conspiracy ' , featured last week in the Guardian, we find a seductive narrative of the politics surrounding the process of setting the nation's dietary recommendations. Detailed within is the story of two researchers, Ancel Keys, a vocal advocate of lowering fat/saturated fat consumption, and John Yudkin, a humble researcher who warned of the dangers of sugar. We are told in 'The Sugar Conspiracy' that, instead of being a matter of scientific differences, Ancel Keys, as part of the 'nutrition elite', squashed the dissenting voice of John Yudkin, who made the case that sugar was the real enemy. This narrative is enticing; it, as the title notes, edges on conspiracy and addresses the deeply political perspectives on taking science and translating it into policy. The narrative crafted by Leslie, however, is dependent upon the idea that there weren't legitimate differences in the quality of evidence put forth by these rese...

Note: this post is not brief and ideally requires a bit of pre-reading:   The Sugar Conspiracy NutritionWonk's response discussing Ancel Keys' data If you're looking for a TL;DR version - see here . In Ian Leslie’s longform article, “ The Sugar Conspiracy ,” we get a look into the history of nutrition, and the suggestion that politics and  power dynamics play significant roles in the setting of dietary guidelines. Leslie starts with a historical perspective, focusing on John Yudkin and his early hypotheses regarding sugar’s role in the aetiology of CVD.  Yudkin’s studies, Leslie says,are cast down by the nutrition elite (i.e. Ancel Keys) at the time, in favor of recommendations that suggested limiting fat/saturated fat/cholesterol as the major drivers of CVD. At face value, the story is one of redemption: Yudkin’s cast aside theories are now being realized by modern crusaders like Robert Lustig. In the article, Leslie states: “These sharp fluctuations ...