Food to die for?

doi:10.1136/bmj.39517.639560.34

BMJ 2008;336:723 (29 March), doi:10.1136/bmj.39517.639560.34

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Food to die for?

Benjamin Caballero, professor of nutrition, paediatrics, and international health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore

bcaballe@jhsph.edu

Obesity could be solved if only we returned to the non-processedfoods of our great grandmother’s days. This is naive inthe extreme, argues Benjamin Caballero

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

There is no question that the general public has been increasinglyfrustrated by the advice it receives about diet and health.The perception is that, instead of clarifying things, new researchonly adds confusion by contradicting previous "evidence." Forexample, we were told to avoid butter because of its saturatedfat content and use vegetable oil instead, only to learn laterthat vegetable oils contain trans fatty acids, which are asbad as saturated fat. Scientists blame the media for this confusion,because they hype "hot" results, regardless of their qualityor relevance, and cite partial results out of context. In turn,the media blame scientists, and some journalists accuse themof "nutritionism"—of having reduced food to lists of chemicals,in the process providing justification to a food industry thatis eager to create more, ever changing products that end uphaving little resemblance to natural foods. This is why . . . [Full text of this article]