Popular Nutrition Books: Research Translation and Fidelity Scoring

Nutrition research is commonly used in bestselling books to convince readers of a protocol's efficacy. Citations punctuate the claims, but to what end? Do readers follow the evidence, or take the citation itself as its own sort of proof? Are books based on rigorous research or cherry-picked citations and half-truths?

As a nutrition PhD whose research focuses on this very thing, my ongoing scholarship takes a two-pronged approach:

• At Factual Wellness, I review books based on how faithfully they translate research. I also evaluate the type of evidence the books use to support their claims. I designed a fidelity scoring system that considers how vulnerable readers with chronic conditions may use the prescriptive content.
• Here at Ethics in Nutrition, I review nutrition research and discuss how the field perpetuates body-sorting and class-based systems. Critical nutrition does not dismiss the entire field. Rather, it expects the field to advance equity and ethics and to retire problematic scales, systems, and biases that evolved from eugenic ideology.

I have spent nearly a decade studying nutrition. I know how important food and nourishment are for humanity. This isn't contested. But there's a clear distinction between useful knowledge that can improve people's lives versus standards, measures, and protocols that control, regulate, and restrict. Too often, these get conflated.

As a nutrition scientist with a background in written communication, my entire focus is research design and translation. Why are studies being done? What is beign measured? Who is paying for them? What do they want to accomplish? How do they gather data? And ultimately, who are these results being applied to? Do the study results faciliate improvements in actual, everyday life? Or do they further population control and compliance measures that disregard realities like social determinants of health and ethical principles like autonomy, justice, and beneficence?