THE idea that what we eat affects our health is deeply ingrained in our collective consciousness. Most people know that the wages of dietary sin are a slew of diseases including obesity, cancer, heart disease, diabetes and osteoporosis. The World Heath Organization, too, sees unhealthy eating as a major problem. It estimates that non-communicable diseases will account for 75 per cent of all deaths worldwide by 2020, and considers an unhealthy diet to be one of the main causes.
That鈥檚 all very well, but what actually constitutes a healthy diet? Obesity-inducing gluttony aside, it鈥檚 surprisingly hard to say. When nutrition researchers have attempted to find definitive links between diet and health, all too often they have drawn a blank (see 鈥淭he good the fad and the unhealthy鈥�). There are many reasons for this, such as flawed study designs and the difficulty in getting research subjects to stick to a particular regime. But there is another possibility that researchers seem strangely reluctant to consider: that there are no strong links between diet and chronic diseases.
While that seems unlikely, it is a possibility that nutrition researchers ought to entertain. If it were true, it would be something worth knowing. At the very least it would suggest that the magnitude of dietary changes required for a person to significantly reduce their risk of disease are simply too great to maintain in the long run. Then we could all stop worrying about what we鈥檙e eating and focus our energies on lifestyle changes that have a genuine chance of succeeding 鈥� stopping smoking, cutting down on alcohol and taking more exercise.
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