"Reductionism and the Deficiency Mentality"
Research in human nutrition over the last 40 years
has led to numerous discoveries and to a comprehensive
understanding of the exact mechanisms
behind how food nutrients affect our bodies.
However, the epidemics of diet-related chronic diseases —
obesity, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, heart disease, stroke, and cancers —
dramatically increases worldwide year after year.
Why hasn't all this intricate knowledge
translated into improvements in public health?
Maybe it has to do with our entire philosophy of nutrition called
reductionism, where everything is broken down
into its constituent parts, where food is reduced to
a collection of single compounds with supposed single effects.
The reductionist approach has traditionally been and continues
today as the dominant approach in nutrition research.
For example, did you know that mechanistically, there's a chemical
in ginger root that down-regulated Phorbol Myristate Acetate (PMA)
induced phosphorylation of ERK1/2 and JNK MAP kinases?
That's actually pretty cool, but not while millions of people
continue to die of diet-related diseases. We already know that
three-quarters of chronic disease risk — diabetes, heart attacks,
stroke, cancer — can be eliminated if everyone who didn't,
followed four simple practices: not smoking, not being obese,
half hour of exercise a day, and eating a healthier diet,
defined as more fruits, veggies, and whole grains, and less meat.
Think what that could mean in terms of the human cost.
We already know enough to save millions of lives.
So shouldn't our efforts be spent implementing these changes
before another dollar is spent figuring out whether or not
some grape skin extract can lower cholesterol in zebrafish —
or even whole foods for that matter?
Why spend taxpayer dollars clogging the arteries
of striped minnows by feeding them a high cholesterol diet
to see if Hawthorn leaves and flowers have the potential to help?
Even if they did, and even if it worked in people too,
wouldn't it be better to just not clog your arteries in the first place?
This dramatic drop in risk, this increase in healthy life years
through preventive nutrition need not involve super foods
or herbal extracts or fancy nutritional supplements;
just healthier eating.
When Hippocrates said something like, "Let food be your medicine
and medicine be your food," he didn't mean that foods are drugs,
but rather that the best way to remain in good health
may be to maintain a healthy diet.
Whereas the historical attitude of the field of nutrition
may be best summed up by the phrase,
"Eat whatever you want after you eat what you should."
In other words, eat whatever you want as long as you get your
vitamins and minerals — a mindset epitomized by breakfast cereals,
providing double-digit vitamins and minerals, but the road to health
is not paved with Coke plus vitamins and minerals.
This reductionistic attitude is good for the food industry,
but not actually good for human health,
because if food is just good for a few nutrients,
then you can get away selling vitamin-fortified Twinkies.
We need to shift from the concept of just getting adequate nutrition
to getting optimal nutrition; not just avoiding scurvy,
but promoting health and minimizing
our risk of developing degenerative diseases.
Bringing things down to their molecular components
works for drug development: discovering all the vitamins,
curing deficiency diseases, but in the field of nutrition,
the reductionist approach is beginning to reach its limits.
We discovered all the vitamins more than a half century ago.
When's the last time you heard of someone coming down with scurvy,
or pellagra, or kwashiorkor — the classic deficiency syndromes?
Whereas, what about the diseases of dietary excess: heart disease, diabetes,
obesity, hypertension — ever heard of anyone with any of those?
Yet we continue to have this deficiency mindset
when it comes to nutrition. When someone tries to reduce
their consumption of meat, the first question they may get
asked is, "Where are you going to get your protein?"
rather than, "Wait a second, if you start eating like that,
where are you going to get your heart disease from?"
The same deficiency mindset led to the emergence
of a multi billion-dollar supplement industry.
What about a daily multivitamin just as insurance against nutrient deficiency?
Better insurance would be to just eat healthy food.