If nutrition was a science.

I used to say that nutrition stopped being a science in 1929. The date is debatable, but I still claim that nutrition isn’t a science. If nutrition was a science, then all nutritionists would be easily able to find information to answer all the following questions.

Weight & Age
A 20 year old man in the year 2000 weighed 80 kg. How much will he weigh when 60 years old? Give median and interquartile range.

Weight & Addiction
A woman 160 cm tall eats an average of 300 g of chocolate a day. How much does she weigh?

Weight & Exercise
What is the minimum safe weight for a 180 cm tall man just prior to swimming the English Channel?

Nutrition & Weight change
List all the fat-soluble chemicals released into the bloodstream from a weight loss of 20 kg from a crash diet? How does that affect the nutritional and medical requirements of the crash diet?

Weight & Lifespan
There is scientific evidence both for and against the claim that weight loss for obese people increases their lifespan. Discuss this evidence in detail.

Weight & Addiction change
A woman of average weight and height suddenly stops smoking after a 2 pack a day habit. How much weight does she gain?

Nutrition & Addiction
An 85 year old man is a heavy social drinker drinking 100 g of alcohol a day. He adds hard liquor to home-fermented fruit. What combination of fruit and hard liquor gives the best diet?

Nutrition
Compare the nutritional value of brewers yeast to that of bakers yeast.

Cooking & Nutrition
What temperature, time and method of cooking liver is the least destructive to its nutritional value?

Nutrition & Organs
List all the chemicals produced by the liver that have an influence on nutrition. Which of these can only be replaced by intravenous injection?

Nutrition & Stress
What exactly is stress? What is the difference in ideal diet between a man with a 9 am blood plasma cortisol level of 150 nmol/L and the same person with a cortisol level of 1000 nmol/L.

Nutrition & Age
What is the difference in ideal diet between a 90 year old man and a 95 year old man?

Brands
Which brands of salt contain no added iodine? Where would you find salt that has a high magnesium content?

Blood chemistry
An underweight person is having renal problems. Tailor a diet to produce the minimum rate of urea production.

Minerals
Trace elements found in the human body include manganese, zinc, copper, cobalt, molybdenum, selenium, chromium, silicon, fluorine, vanadium, nickel, arsenic and tin. Which of these are essential nutrients and what is their recommended minimum intake?

Weight & Genetics
Exactly which genes are linked to obestity?

Nutrition & Genetics
Which genes need to be examined before an ideal diet can be determined?

Nuitrition & Money
If all food is bought, what is the minimum amount of money that an average height woman needs to spend per week in order to satisfy all nutritional requirements on an ongoing basis?

Nutrition & Illness
A man has 3rd degree burns to 1/3 of his body. Design his intevenous and oral diet plans.

Nutrition & Recovery from being underweight
A man is found who has been on a starvation diet for a month. Design a diet plan for his recovery.

Minimal weight diet
A team of explorers will be retracing the steps of Ernest Giles “Australia Twice Traversed” but using modern foods. Design the lightest weight sustainable diet for the journey.

Food preservation
Hot chillis cause damage, including cancer, to cells of the mouth, throat and stomach. Hot chillis also have antibacterial propertiers that preserve foods in hot climates. In the absence of refrigerators and using known food preservation properties, plot the ideal Scoville number of food as a function of average peak daytime temperature.

Pica
The eating disorder pica is bad, but how many possible dietary advantages can it have if managed properly?

Native foods
Which species of introduced pest grasses have the highest nutritional value? Consider separately seeds, growing tips, and rhizomes.

Digestion timing
How much time does it take the average digestive system to digest 80% of a Big Mac?

Digestion chemistry
List all the chemicals moved by the lower bowel to the bloodstream. What is the maximum possible percentage of these that weren’t produced by lysis?

not all humans are created the same.

Average height varies across cultures

Average diet varies across cultures

nutritional needs vary according to environmental factors

nutrition is, at best, a finite science

One of the things about science is that it works within a framework of uncertainty.
I am sure that you are familiar with the need to prove uncertainty in order to gain a research grant.

So I say that your list and claims are nonsense.

I learned this.

There are 8 to 10 essential amino acids that humans need some consume.

8 for adults and 10 for children.

The cook and prepare food is chemistry in action.

Understanding the uptake of nutrients to the combination required by the human body seems scientific to me and and stuff like that.

Understanding why some foods may be nutrient rich but not adequate for the human stomach and enzyme activity to metabolize adequately relative to other food sources seems scientific.

ratty one said:

I learned this.

There are 8 to 10 essential amino acids that …… humans need some consume.

8 for adults and 10 for children to be precise.

Arguably (perhaps) meat sourced ones.

To cook and prepare food is chemistry in action ( I thought)

Understanding the uptake of nutrients and the required combination by the human body seems scientific to me.

Understanding why some foods may be nutrient rich but not adequate for the human stomach and enzyme activity to metabolize adequately relative to other food sources seems scientific.

Understanding food storage and microbe growth at different temperature seems scientific too.

I did not learn to type or proofread though.

ratty one said:

ratty one said:

I learned this.

There are 8 to 10 essential amino acids that …… humans need to consume.

.

I did not learn to type or proofread though.

*bump* for roughbarked (and mollwollfumble).

Wocky said:

*bump* for roughbarked (and mollwollfumble).

I’m waiting for him to add some uncertainty.. ;)

roughbarked said:

Wocky said:

*bump* for roughbarked (and mollwollfumble).

I’m waiting for him to add some uncertainty.. ;)

Nutrition science should be so simple, after all, doing randomised placebo controlled trials where certain populations are denied various foods or encouraged to eat other foods would be in everyone’s best interest.

Anyway I can say this much. No doctor has ever said I have any nutritional deficiency.

poikilotherm said:

roughbarked said:

Wocky said:

*bump* for roughbarked (and mollwollfumble).

I’m waiting for him to add some uncertainty.. ;)

Nutrition science should be so simple, after all, doing randomised placebo controlled trials where certain populations are denied various foods or encouraged to eat other foods would be in everyone’s best interest.

Surely for a valid result, they should be forced to eat the specified diet until death.

The Rev Dodgson said:

poikilotherm said:

roughbarked said:

I’m waiting for him to add some uncertainty.. ;)

Nutrition science should be so simple, after all, doing randomised placebo controlled trials where certain populations are denied various foods or encouraged to eat other foods would be in everyone’s best interest.

Surely for a valid result, they should be forced to eat the specified diet until death.

There are some people who do. Why not study them? Compare the dirt eaters with the takeaway junkies.

roughbarked said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

poikilotherm said:

Nutrition science should be so simple, after all, doing randomised placebo controlled trials where certain populations are denied various foods or encouraged to eat other foods would be in everyone’s best interest.

Surely for a valid result, they should be forced to eat the specified diet until death.

There are some people who do. Why not study them? Compare the dirt eaters with the takeaway junkies.

That’s just what they did isn’t it?

The point is though, was the reduced rate of death amongst the veg eaters a result of eating lots of veg, or having an overall healthier life-style, including less sugar, less fat, less drugs, more exercise, less prone to depression, etc.

How many people suffering from life threatening depression go and get themselves a plate of brussel sprouts to cheer themselves up?

The Rev Dodgson said:

How many people suffering from life threatening depression go and get themselves a plate of brussel sprouts to cheer themselves up?

I’d have probably not eaten a brussel sprout for maybe forty years, maybe if I had, my memory may be better..?

roughbarked said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

poikilotherm said:

Nutrition science should be so simple, after all, doing randomised placebo controlled trials where certain populations are denied various foods or encouraged to eat other foods would be in everyone’s best interest.

Surely for a valid result, they should be forced to eat the specified diet until death.

There are some people who do. Why not study them? Compare the dirt eaters with the takeaway junkies.

Confounding, it was the point I was making facetiously with the trial comment (and rev followed up with the starving thing). There’s no way to rule out confounding when you just ‘observe’, no matter how good your study design, you need active interventions to draw definitive conclusions, which, for obvious reasons, are difficult in this area.