Kevin Klatt, PhD, RD

I had a reader ask "could you speak about how you integrate your nutrition knowledge into your own life without venturing into a disordered/obsessive mentality ?" I think this is a really pertinent question in the field of eating behavior at the moment. The health community is very focused on the idea of mindful eating; but when does mindful become manic? Health-minded communities, often focusing around what not to eat, have become quite zealous with their endeavors, leading to movements like "thinspo"/thigh gap glorification. There's the term, 'orthorexia', that I've seen thrown around a lot in reference to some of these restrictive health movements, although it is not considered a mental disorder in the DSM-V. However, it does get it's own page on nationaleatingdisorder.org (1). Concern over hyper-restriction of foods and its detrimental psychological outcomes has been talked about for a while in dietetics (2), though not researched as extens...

Horrible media coverage of science is back at it again. I feel less and less that I'm making an overarching generalization every time I tell my students to ignore every headline they hear. This time, the headlines are reading " vegetarians are less health and have a poorer quality of life ". Social media reports seem to have some level of rejoicing that finally meat isn't on the chopping block (pun  ✓).  So far I've seen comments like, "well obviously", "duh", "you need meat". I think to myself, oh, was there a longitudinal trial that closely tracked vegetarians, and all of their lifestyle factors, that I missed? Of course not. This report (1) comes from a cohort of Austrians, that is actually a subset of a larger study (2). The analysis of the larger study concluded "  Our results show that a vegetarian diet is associated with a better health-related behavior, a lower BMI, and a higher  SES"."  Of course, th...

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...

Today, I had a friend ask me whether protein powders were bad. I have students ask me on a daily basis whether something is bad to eat or not. These are extremely difficult questions to answer, if you're trying to remain scientific. While it's the job of public health nutrition to reduce foods and nutrients to 'bad' or 'good', it's the job of nutritional scientists and dietitians to look at dosage, and the context of a food within an individual's diet - it's wholly unscientific to say whether something is bad for someone. Not only is it unscientific, I think this is the wrong mindset to get into, regarding food. The focus on "is it unhealthy" fixates individuals on avoiding specific foods (which one could argue isn't the healthiest relationship to have with food) . I can give you a list of a million things not to eat, but what would you know about eating? In reality, we should focus on what to eat . If you're focusing on a diet ...

I had a soon-to-be-RD friend of mine ask me to write up a brief article on how clinicians can respond to clients who would like to go, or are, Paleo. 1. No diet is perfect by name - it's all about the nutrients you intake. Most dietary mantras (Mediterranean, Veg*n, Paleo, etc) can be healthful assuming you get adequate amounts of all your nutrients, but many have their drawbacks - Paleo is no exception. When it comes to Paleo, there's a few nutrients to keep in mind: Iodine: eschewing dairy and choosing sea salt can potentially cut large sources of iodine in the diet. Advise individuals to consume seaweed, incorporate some iodized salt, or take a Kelp extract supplement (be careful not to overdue with the supplements if it gets to that point, many contain 2-3x the RDA).  Manganese: It's not a mineral we hear talked about a lot, but the major sources of it are grains, especially brown rice. If the individual is just concerned about gluten, brown rice can be a great op...

I really applaud anyone who is trying to make positive changes to their lifestyle, especially by improving their nutrition but, few things annoy me more than massively disseminated misinformation. The most virulent case of this is linoleic acid, an omega 6 (n-6) fatty acid. Do one google search of "Omega 6's and Inflammation" and you'll find articles on every internet health site, written by MDs/RDs/etc etc, telling you that Omega 6's, like those found in vegetable oils, are virtually the cause of every modern day ailment, from heart disease, to acne and arthritis. They'll cite you information stating that the n-6:n-3 fatty acid ratio is all out of whack. There seem to be 2 reasons that people claim linoleic acid is pro-inflammatory. 1, because it is a precursor to inflammatory molecules in the body. 2, because it is subject to oxidation, and these oxidative endproducts (reactive carbonyl compounds, ketones, aldehydes) incite an immune response . 1. Lino...

If you're reading this expecting me to either endorse or stand in opposition to high-protein diets, turn back now. In nutrition, it's difficult to make a simplistic recommendation out of the mounds of scientific literature that exists on a topic - I can't imagine the stress that the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) is under while making population-level recommendations. Protein is probably the most well studied of the macronutrients, from a physiological and biochemical perspective - the worldwide obsession with ensuring adequate 'complete' protein intake enveloped a lot nutritional sciences research in the 1900's. From this research, we learned a lot about amino acid metabolism/catabolism and understand the basic needs of most humans. It's known now that it's not necessary to only eat complete proteins, and that eating a combination of plant foods can provide all of the amino acids - hence, vegetarians not completely wasting...

That title is half a fiber joke and half pointing to the need for a Nutrition Fact Check website (similar to the politics version ). Fiber also happens to be a great way to slow down digestion, to reduce the surge of blood sugar following a higher carbohydrate meal and maintain satiety for longer (1). I see/hear a lot of things about Glycemic Index and many of them are not factual, misguided or simply untrue. The most common myth I've heard lately is that all whole grains have the same Glycemic Index value as processed grains (it varies a lot, some do , some don't - see below). Besides the fact that one should be using the Glycemic Load and ditching the Glycemic Index, it's hard to substantiate those rumors - I don't like to call out web sites, simply type into google "whole wheat same GI as white wheat" if you want to see the numerous websites passing around this myth. If you would like a reliable source regarding general Glycemic Indices, try this Ha...

I also write for a dietitian's blog in NYC - if you're interested, check out my post questioning the mantra of moderation over at : http://the-sage.org/post/60752812562/moderation-is-key Everything in Moderation? This is the mantra of the field of nutrition. It states that no one food is bad for you if you consume it in moderation . “Everything in moderation” is a bit confusing - and I imagine to the average person. Should you consume everything in the same moderation? I hope not - how moderately you consume vegetables and how moderately you consume Crisco should hopefully be extremely different levels of moderation. Added sugars are fine to consume in moderation - does that mean you drink a Coca-Cola once a week? Once a month? 4 times a year? What is moderate? Moderate consumption and your ability to thrive on moderate consumption of soda are going to be different depending on your daily schedule, level of activity and even your genes. The biggest issue with ...