Dietary methods of assessment include looking at past or current intakes of nutrients from food by individuals or a group to determine their nutritional status. There are several methods used to do this:. A trained professional asks the subject to recall all food and drink consumed in the previous 24 hours. This is a quick and easy method. The subject is given a list of foods and asked to indicate intake per day, per week, and per month. This method is inexpensive and easy to administer.
It is more accurate than the 24 hour recall. Food intake is recorded by the subject at the time of eating. This method is reliable but difficult to maintain. Also known as a food journal or food record. This method requires food to be weighed and exactly calculated. It is very accurate but rarely used because it is time-consuming and expensive.
Science is always moving forward, albeit sometimes slowly. One study is not enough to make a guideline or a recommendation, or cure a disease. Science is a stepwise process that builds on past evidence and finally culminates into a well-accepted conclusion. Unfortunately, not all scientific conclusions are developed in the interest of human health, and some can be biased. Therefore, it is important to know where a scientific study was conducted and who provided the funding, as this can have an impact on the scientific conclusions being made.
For example, an air quality study paid for by a tobacco company diminishes its value in the minds of readers as well as a red meat study performed at a laboratory funded by a national beef association.
One of the newest areas in the realm of nutritional science is the scientific discipline of nutritional genetics, also called nutrigenomics.
Genes are part of DNA and contain the genetic information that make up all of our traits. While we know that health is defined as more than just the absence of disease, there are currently very few accurate genetic markers of good health.
Rather, there are many more genetic markers for disease. As science evolves, so does technology. Both can be used to create a healthy diet, optimize health, and prevent disease. This method is inexpensive and easy to administer.
It is more accurate than the 24 hour recall. Food intake is recorded by the subject at the time of eating. This method is reliable but difficult to maintain. Also known as a food journal or food record. This method requires food to be weighed and exactly calculated. It is very accurate but rarely used because it is time-consuming and expensive.
Science is always moving forward, albeit sometimes slowly. One study is not enough to make a guideline or a recommendation, or cure a disease.
Science is a stepwise process that builds on past evidence and finally culminates into a well-accepted conclusion. Unfortunately, not all scientific conclusions are developed in the interest of human health, and some can be biased. Therefore, it is important to know where a scientific study was conducted and who provided the funding, as this can have an impact on the scientific conclusions being made.
For example, an air quality study paid for by a tobacco company diminishes its value in the minds of readers as well as a red meat study performed at a laboratory funded by a national beef association. One of the newest areas in the realm of nutritional science is the scientific discipline of nutritional genetics, also called nutrigenomics.
Genes are part of DNA and contain the genetic information that make up all of our traits. While we know that health is defined as more than just the absence of disease, there are currently very few accurate genetic markers of good health.
Rather, there are many more genetic markers for disease. As science evolves, so does technology. Both can be used to create a healthy diet, optimize health, and prevent disease. What else is not far off? How about another app that provides a shopping list that adheres to all dietary guidelines and is emailed to the central server at your local grocer, who then delivers the food to your home? The food is then stored in your smart fridge which documents your daily diet at home and delivers your weekly dietary assessment to your home computer.
At your computer, you can compare your diet with other diets aimed at weight loss, optimal strength training, reduction in risk for specific diseases or any other health goals you may have. You also may delve into the field of nutritional genetics and download your gene expression profiles to a database that analyzes your genes against millions of others. Can you unpack it? Food science started out in universities as a way to support the food industry.
In the early 20th century, Cornell University developed departments of dairy, meat, and poultry science in order to support those industries. Faculty did research on the best way to feed animals to maximize their growth. As the processed food industry became more developed, universities began hiring scientists who could help food companies make and develop new products.
So these scientists were part of the food industry — and the food industry supports food science. I now give talks at the Pepsi auditorium at Cornell. It was your informal study of industry-funded food research that got me interested in this issue.
That was part of the genesis of this book. At the end of a year, I had collected industry-funded studies, and of them had favorable results; only 12 did not, despite my begging readers to send me examples. This was casual and not scientific. So I consider this kind of research marketing, not science. People who do the studies say the conduct of their science is fine, and it well may be.
But research on where the bias comes in says the real problem is in the design of the research question — the way the question gets asked — and the interpretation of results. There are only 11 studies on how industry funding has influenced food and beverage research, even though there are thousands of such studies on how drug company money has influenced the practice of medicine.
The one early example I could find was a Center for Science in the Public Interest investigation, with a member of Congress, of food industry influence on academics in Then I published a commentary in , and the first research article came out in Altogether, I could only find 11 studies through These studies — looking at the results of those funded by a food company and not — seem like they are easy to do, but very few researchers seem interested in addressing or answering such questions.
Also, journals seem reluctant to publish those studies, judging from my peer review experience. What do you think is getting in the way of the nutrition community doing something about its conflict of interest problem? If you talk to researchers who take food industry money, they are unaware of the influence of funding and of the large body of literature on the psychology of gifts. We are human. We like the foods that food industries make — they taste good, they are ubiquitous in our lives, and some of them are iconic.
You make a strong case in the book that the food industry has borrowed from the tobacco industry when it comes to using science for marketing purposes and avoiding regulation. The tobacco industry, knowing full well that research linked cigarette smoking to lung cancer risk, embarked on a strategy to cast doubt on that research and stave off regulation.
Cigarette companies gave gifts to researchers, funded researchers, found ways to support them so they would cast doubt on research suggesting harm and push the uncertainty. The American Beverage Association insists that sugar-sweetened beverages have no role in obesity or Type 2 diabetes, for example, despite much suggestive evidence that they do.
Without question, we need to regulate the marketing of junk food to children. For other foods, the situation is more complicated. So do food companies have a right to make junk foods and market them? Yes, they do, but they should be held to ethical and nutritional standards.
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