This site has a rule: we do not name the people we think are selling you complexity; we describe the pattern and let you recognize it. The rule has a corollary we use less often than we should: we do name the people getting it right. Today Marion Nestle, whose Food Politics blog is the model for this one, recommended Food Sense: What to Eat and Why by Christopher Gardner, the Stanford professor who directs its nutrition studies, chairs the American Heart Association's nutrition committee and has led more than twenty randomized trials of diets — including the ones that found that low-fat and low-carb diets both work about equally when they are made of real food. The book came out this month. Nestle discloses that she blurbed it; we have no relationship with either author, and we are recommending it anyway.
Why this book. Gardner's framework is two short lists: a "big four" — vegetables and whole foods in, added sugar and refined grains out — and a "solid six" of beans, fruits, nuts, eggs, fish and yogurt. The chapters Nestle highlights are the arguments we have made all year: the diet wars are mostly noise; you probably get enough protein; the seed-oil scare is slander; sugar is sugar and less is always better. What distinguishes Gardner from the nutrition influencers is not the advice, which is sensible, but the source: a trialist whose conclusions come from randomized studies he ran, written with what the book calls a strong foundation in science and lots of room for flexibility. In January, when the federal guidelines came out, he was the advisory-committee member quoted saying he was disappointed in the pyramid. He was right then, too.
Loree’s takeI will be handing this to patients, which I rarely say about a diet book. It is the first one in a long time that tells people what I tell them — eat the solid six, skip the sugar, stop fighting about fat versus carbs — with the trials attached and no supplement line at the back. Read it over the weekend, and then do not read another diet book for a year.
Ben’s takeThere is a business model for sensible advice and it is a book, once, for thirty dollars. Compare that to the subscription, the kit, the protocol. The sensible voices in this field are easy to spot because they have so little to sell you, and that is exactly why they get drowned out. Naming them is the least we can do. Buy the book; it will last longer than the ring.
Beans, fruits, nuts, eggs, fish, yogurt; less sugar; stop the diet wars. One book, once. Then go eat with someone.