Don't Be Average

Why aim for less when you can have more?

Nutrition science is junk science.

If you never study a topic, you’ll never know whether or not it works. This is a common theme in nutrition science. Studies with powerful and wealthy special interests get funded. Others don’t.

It’s easy to manipulate data to fit your conclusion. History is full of examples. Cigarette companies funding studies saying smoking isn’t bad, oil companies saying global warming isn’t real, Al Gore funding studies saying global warming is real.

This is the case with nutrition studies. Big pharma, Big Agriculture, sugar companies, Big Dairy, and of course politicians all have their dirty hands in the mix. The result is The Food Pyramid and the junk study (DASH Diet) supporting it. 99% of these studies are useless or counterproductive.

Since this applies to most of the nutrition industry, it also applies to the daily recommended vitamins and minerals.

These values aren’t something we can just calculate with our understanding of anatomy and physiology. I know the human body needs magnesium but if I went out and scraped it off a rock and ate it, I'd be in for a rough day. Knowing how much of each micronutrient we need is important. You must ensure you are getting enough, and in some cases not getting too much.

Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) is a nutrition term which describes the daily dietary intake of nutrients to satisfy 97.5% of the population. This number is calculated from the Estimated Average Requirements (EAR), which is the amount of a given nutrient required to satisfy 50% of the population.

Here’s a dirty little secret your nutritionist/dietician doesn’t want you to know, and your doctor certainly doesn’t know: these values are mostly made up.