When medicine ignores nutrition entirely, and nutrient supplements are still complete unknowns, you have to wonder who the FDA is working for.
When medicine ignores nutrition entirely, and nutrient supplements are still complete unknowns, you have to wonder who the FDA is working for.
Medicine doesn't really ignore nutrition, but the problem is:
1. Most people don't believe it anyway. People want to hear they can eat hamburgers and milkshakes and be healthy. Telling them "we know that gives you heart disease and cancer" does nothing.
2. Nutrition is complicated and different for every person, because everyone has different things they can tolerate. The "perfect" diet is actually worthless because it has a 0% success rate. Really, we have to optimize for how miserable people are willing to be.
3. Most people are unhealthy enough that nutrition is the least of their concerns. That sounds crazy, I know, but if you're obese (which most people are!), then priority is being not obese. Not your nutrition. I know those sound related but they're way less related than you think.
> Most people don't believe it anyway
Maybe because so much of it is wrong, or (very charitably, as much is industry-biased) outdated?
Lifestyle modification is a definite challenge and I’m not dismissing it.
Still, hamburgers and milkshakes don’t give you heart disease and cancer. Overeating, oxidative stress from low-quality ingredients, etc might.
> hamburgers and milkshakes don’t give you heart disease and cancer
They absolutely do, particularly if you're getting most of your calories from them. If evidence-based medicine doesn't convince you, uh, hamburgers and supermarket milk tends to be processed.
They absolutely do not, unless you’re getting too many calories.
Individual foods are—with some exceptions—neither bad for you nor good for you. A healthy diet can occasionally include doughnuts, and milkshakes. Your overall diet is what matters.
Sure, they are not mercury-level toxic. However, these recommendations are for people who consume way too much of these dishes, and it's a safe assumption that this is the case for a significant part of the population.
Sure. We’re saying roughly the same thing. For most Americans, hamburgers cause heart disease because we don’t exercise enough or eat enough plants. If you’re backpacking twenty miles a day, sure, eat whatever, you won’t suffer inflammation or obesity from it. (Though you may run nutritional deficiencies. And you’re building bad habits for when your activity necessarily tapers off.)
> Still, hamburgers and milkshakes don’t give you heart disease and cancer. Overeating, oxidative stress from low-quality ingredients, etc might.
What? “Oxidative stress”? Oh come on, at least go full “seed oil” if we’re going to talk nonsense.
We already left the land of reason far behind by the time OP implied hamburgers and milkshakes give people cancer.
Depends on the nutrients that comprise them to the extent they contain a lot of omega-6 or not. Not heart disease so much but the other killer - might as well mention in this context. 'A high omega-3, low omega-6 diet with FO for 1 year resulted in a significant reduction in Ki-67 index, a biomarker for prostate cancer'. https://doi.org/10.1200/JCO.24.00608. Also Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases (2024) 27:700 – 708 'Our preclinical findings provide rationale for clinical trials evaluating ω-3 fatty acids as a potential therapy for prostate cancer'.
Seed oils are not as bad as painted but some caution is needed given for instance the industrial processes used to bring them to market sometimes. Plus the way the oils are cooked when they create free radicals. This is not nonsense.
You don’t have to wonder. It’s public record that 45% of the FDA’s budget incomes from user fees that companies pay when they apply for approval of a medical device or drug.
In the drug division specifically, the number is about 75%.
Nutrition is run on fads - see whole fitness and healthy food bullshit. Nutrition supplements ended up being a loophole that allows pharmacies and pharma companies to sell all kinds of random stuff that they can't or don't want to, show is safe, or doing anything at all.
Medicine doesn't ignore nutrition, you just don't like the answers.
And it shows on the research: e.g. does creatine help muscle building? No.[1] But cue some anecdote from someone where they also changed a dozen other things at the same time but are sure it was that.
[1] https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2025/03/sports-supplem...
Creatine is probably the most well-studied nutritional supplement we have, and one of the most efficacious. You are presenting a single study to counter that. Not even a meta-analysis, but a single study of just 54 participants who did not exercise at all previously (from the study; "Apparently healthy individuals, with a body mass index of ≤30 kg/m2 and not meeting current physical activity guidelines of at least 150 min of moderate-intensity exercise were included. Individuals who undertook [resistance training] within the previous 12 months were excluded"). The general consensus is that it is absolutely helpful in muscle-building. See, for example [0] and [1]. Beware the man of one study. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-...
[0]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12665265/ - Meta analysis results; "after intervention, the Cr group exhibited significant strength gains"
[1]: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/17/17/2748 - "A total of 69 studies with 1937 participants were included for analysis. Creatine plus resistance training produced small but statistically significant improvements... when compared to the placebo."
But there's a core problem with this, in many states doctors are legally forbidden to give nutrition advice. The academy of nutrition and dietetics has worked very hard to make it so that only dietitians can provide nutrition advice. Take Ohio for example, a medical doctor in Ohio is legally forbidden and actually in jeopardy of losing their license and going to jail if they were to provide nutrition advice without a dietetics license. Dietitians are not doctors, but the academy of nutrition and dietetics wants you to think they are.
> Dietitians are not doctors
And doctors are not dietitians.
Doctors in the US receive an average of under 20 hours of training in nutrition over four years of medical school. What little they do receive is often focused on nutrient deficiencies rather than on meal planning for health and chronic disease prevention. Less than 15% of residency programs include anything on nutrition.
To become a registered dietician requires at least a Master's degree in dietetics or nutrition or a related field, and at least 1000 hours of supervised internships.
PS: before any Europeans hold this up as an example of the poor US health care system, doctors in Europe average 24 hours of nutrition training.
Aren't doctors actually exempted specifically from such regulations in almost all states? AFAIK they can actually give nutritional advice legally in nearly every jurisdiction in the US.
Mmmm, regulatory capture and rent seeking. Will it ever end?