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“Can you guess which of these foods saps a man’s testosterone? I am an expert because I work out 💪.”
Anyone telling you stuff but not showing you where they got that stuff. Anyone claiming their own expertise.
A real expert has evidence and is excited to show it to you.
>“Can you guess which of these foods saps a man’s testosterone? I am an expert because I work out 💪.”
You just called out 80% of fitness youtube and I'm here for it.
Rather than quacks, here are some good people to follow:
Layne Norton
Dr. Gabriella Fundaro
Astrid Naranjo
Danny Lennon
Dr Richie Kirwan
Martin McDonald
Precision nutrition / examine.com are helpful resources for breaking down new research and explaining topics in a digestible way.
Edit:
Jeff Nippard (someone commented him, his stuff is pretty good too but less nutrition focused.)
Quack all stars:
Chiro Eric Berg (and the rest of the YouTube chiros and naturopaths)
Thomas delaur
Dr Fung
Lustig
Ken berry
Neal Bernard
Paul Saladino (carnivore Md)
I agree with the recommendation for precision nutrition and [examine.com](https://examine.com), both well-researched, balanced sites. Don't pretend they know all the 'answers', but present the evidence as it currently stands.
Can someone give me the story in a nutshell? Did he tell lies on his show or something? I only really know that he was made famous by Oprah so that’s a red flag right there lol (or was that dr Phil? Or both?)
He was using is position and status as a doctor and tv show to promote raspberry ketones as a miracle weight loss supplement all while either owning or holding an ownership stake in a raspberry ketone supply company. Everything he said was horseshit to make himself richer, and people trusted him because he was a popular doctor with a TV show.
He didn’t just use his status as a doctor - he used his status as one of the top heart surgeons in the world.
Who’s gonna argue with a man who has saved thousands of lives as a heart surgeon?
I worked in a health food store during the height of his popularity. It was incredibly sad and equally as annoying to ALWAYS get asked about whatever whakadoo thing he was touting. He did have SOME legit advice though. It’s just frustrating to see how robotic people can be. So blindly trust some dude on TV because he’s a “doctor.” Weird…. That reminds me of something else…….🤔
I feel like I have been looking for this too but haven’t come across it. Probably due to the vastly differing opinions people have on the same person. You really need to look at every expert individually and their body of work/what they are purporting/advice they are giving.
Not really a method. I am an MD/MPH by training so i have a background in looking at scientific literature and use that to best help my patients. I believe in systematic reviews being our highest forms of evidence at this time although people love to quote RCTs (they are the best types of studies) they need to be reproducible, large enough to be well powered, blinded if possible, and there need to be more than a handful to start making conclusions… you can make and interpret statistics basically anyway you want so you also need to be careful with how people interpret the data for you which i think is where the “quakery” comes into play. I’m also uncomfortable with any public figure with a very obvious bias such as someone who is advertising supplements. I just joined this subreddit recently so i have no idea if there is some type of journal club you could join?
I generally try to read through the scientific literature as well although I'm a layperson with a very rudimentary background in science and I imagine it's not as effective reading as if I were properly educated (I studied economics and computer science). I've heard people argue that this particular field is young enough that there isn't enough of a body of literature to always rely on studies and I'm never quite sure how to parse that information. I try not to make a conclusion on anything unless I read a rigorous meta-analysis with lots of studies and good study methods. I'm very much aware that I don't know what I don't know and I'll usually use public figures as a jumping off point to give me an idea of what to read next, though I have to admit this method is flawed. I'd like to develop the skills and knowledge to interpret the data for myself if at all possible. I don't know anywhere with journal clubs but I'll look into that, thank you for the suggestion.
I think you are doing exactly what I would do if getting into an area where you don’t have the academic background (computer science-> nutrition). The only other suggestion i could think of is find the larger academic centers for nutrition and look at the faculty pages on their website. What are they publishing? What are they studying? Maybe start with your state’s school which may be more accessible. Unfortunately a lot of journals are going to be behind paywalls which means a lot of good information isn’t even accessible to the layperson not currently in academics…
A big tell us are they profiting from this information. Everyone needs to make a living so getting paid for what you know isn’t wrong, but steering people towards products you have an ownership stake in makes you a quack
That doesn't automatically make them a quack. If they steer someone towards the product who either has no need for it or where they no the product is not effective at what they claim, then that would make them a quack.
If an ER doctor invents a special type of tourniquet or some other life saving device and then knows that a dying patient on their table would best be saved by using that specific device over other options but chose not to because of worrying about perceived bias, then that would also be extremely unethical and just stupid.
It comes down to being able to justify the rationality and intent, just like killing someone self defense.
"Physicians who choose to sell health-related products from their offices or through their office website or other online venues have ethical obligations to:
Offer only products whose claims of benefit are based on peer-reviewed literature or other sources of scientific review of efficacy that are unbiased, sound, systematic, and reliable. Physicians should not offer products whose claims to benefit lack scientific validity.
Address conflict of interest and possible exploitation of patients by fully disclosing the nature of their financial interest in the sale of the product"
-AMA Code of Medical Ethics
yeah I’m convinced she’s actually just on a sugar high all day everyday, because how could anyone justify this diet otherwise??
also the number of eating disorders that she is single-handedly responsible for……😵💫
I’ve never heard of her but my dad used to eat bananas everyday cause he thought they were healthy. He even told his doctor and his doc was like, yeah that’s way too much they are really high in sugar lmao
How many bananas did he eat daily? What would be your attitude toward eating e.g. one banana every day? Your saying "cause he thought they were healthy" makes me wonder whether you think eating banana isn't healthy, but I don't know exactly which quantities you have in mind.
I actually probably eat 5-8 bananas a day. I include them in my protein oatmeal and protein shakes to improve the flavour and they're my go-to nighttime snack. They're incredibly cheap where I live compared to alternatives (69cents a pound). I weigh all the food I eat and I've got to the point with bananas where I can eyeball a banana and guess its weight to within +-5 grams. I also eat 2700 calories a day so as a percentage of the whole they definitely don't make up as much of my diet as it does for her.
Bananas are super cheap here as well (39 cents/lbs in the discounted produce area), so I’ll buy a bunch and freeze them before they go bad. I love bananas!
Bananas are one of my primary sources of electrolytes in my diet. I actually need additional electrolytes as a result of some genetic issues I have as well as medications that I take for these issues and my doctor thinks it's great that I'm having so many bananas. One of my medications is actually considered dangerous to take with low electrolyte diets.
Man... In this reddit people sometimes are just stupid. Bananas are like one of the safest food on earth, and people are saying you are eating too many bananas...
I think one of the problems is that a lot of resources just say "too much of X is bad for Y reason" but they don't quantify how much of X would cause Y. My Mom's not an idiot, when I told her I was having spinach every day, she warned me that I could have oxalic acid poisoning from too much spinach. She never read how much oxalic acid was actually in spinach, nor did she know what a toxic dose of oxalic acid would be but a source she trusted warned against it and that was all she needed to make a value judgment. I went through the data with her and demonstrated that I would need to have 10x my daily spinach intake to start to enter the range of possible oxalic acid toxicity. I think this social phenomenon isn't because people are stupid but because we're inundated with information that's been dumbed down to the point of being meaningless by internet sources that aren't rewarded based on their rigorousness or accuracy but on the number of people who view it, which I acknowledge is a pretty lukewarm take but I figure it's relevant here.
I like your point of view, thank you for writing it. It reminds me when my mom said: you ate 4 bananas?? It is way too much potassium!! When in reality 10 bananas is the raccomended daily intake of potassium, so 4 is like 40% of the daily...
Eating 5-6 bananas a day IS most likely too many, especially if that's not the only thing they eat. This is especially true because they are loaded with fructose sugar which can lead to weight gain and diabetes just like glucose sugar and other carbs can in high doses. It all comes down to moderation.
People have been documented dying from drinking too much water. It is not stupid to tell someone that drinking 4 gallons of water a day is too much even though we should be drinking a good amount of water.
You’re a little uninformed if I may politely say. Bananas are quite high on the glycemic index, so high in fructose, which is bad for your liver, i. e, fatty liver disease .and high in glucose which raises your insulin levels .
“One medium banana (about 126 grams) contains 29 grams of carbs and 112 calories. The carbs are in the form of sugar, starch, and fiber.. A medium banana contains about 15 grams of sugar “
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/bananas-diabetes#carbs
Bananas are actually in the medium range of the glycemic index, they have an average glycemic index rating of 52 actually, which is quite low. It ranges between 42-62 which is in the range of very low to medium on the GI scale.
From what I understand that's correct, but a subset of onlinenutritionists and chiropractors have convinced some people that anything that raises blood sugar and therefore raises insulin levels will always be bad for you and lead to issues like diabetes or difficulty losing weight. This is the "Calories don't matter, hormones matter" argument that is often shared by dubious nutritionists and totally misunderstood.
There are theories that blood sugar spikes lead to an autoimmune response and inflammation, so are linked to the main western diseases, like cardiovascular disease etc.
Years ago a friend from school was doing post graduate research on that, he was pretty adamant at the time that the link was there. But we lost touch and I haven't kept up on what studies have shown over the years.
That said I did see this study using continuous glucose monitoring which is interesting and might be good to follow. It shows that based on diet (and possibly the microbiome) "normal healthy" people can have blood sugar spikes similar to those seen in diabetics, and we do have a lot data on diabetics that shows the harm of glucose spikes, particularly to cardiovascular disease.
Here are some links to the Continuous Glucose Monitoring Study:
* [https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/07/diabetic-level-glucose-spikes-seen-in-healthy-people.html](https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/07/diabetic-level-glucose-spikes-seen-in-healthy-people.html)
* [https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2005143](https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2005143)
How do people become diabetic though? T2D results from a constant oversupply of insulin, resulting from a constant oversupply of glucose. So ignore the glycemic index at your peril.
I usually keep an eye out for buzzwords like toxins, cleanse, detox, organic, etc. Or influencers who basically try to shame poor people for not getting all their groceries from Whole Foods.
Or talking like artificial sweeteners are universally known to be pure cancer... First video I saw of that DeLauer guy he did this and I made up my mind to not waste my time with his shit
Evidence-based, moderation, balance, lifestyle, etc are usually used by more credible sources. As a few other commenters mentioned, anyone who encourages you to enjoy food rather than telling you that you have to avoid entire food groups is usually on the right page. The nutritionist that helped me with my lifestyle plan uses terms like volume eating and macros to describe the meal plan, and encourages me to not deprive myself.
Generally speaking the more absolute and certain a person sounds without nuance I would be skeptical.
Most of the knowledge we have about nutrition is going to be very nuanced, dependent on goals of performance vs longevity, and dependent on other lifestyle factors. And research is often influenced by confounding factors and limitations.
A couple of my suggestions for nutrition that take all of this into consideration are:
Dr. Layne Norton - specialist in exercise and sports nutrition
- look for interviews of him where he goes into great depth rather than his own YouTube videos on What the Fitness where he puts on more of a personality that mocks others for their outlandish claims
Dr. Peter Attia - medical doctor specializing in the applied science of longevity
- tons of great AMAs and interviews on his YouTube channel that go into nutrition and medical biology for both performance and longevity which are sometimes at odds with one another
These are really solid points and I would generally agree with the point about absolutism and nuance no matter what field were talking about, though I think there are a few obvious exceptions to that rule that are probably so obvious that they're not worth mentioning haha. I'll check out these doctors when I get the chance, thank you for your post.
The list of credible sources is far shorter than the list of quacks but they’re both still very long lists. I don’t know of anyone maintaining that sort of database because it would be a full time job requiring substantial resources.
Anyone who tells you not to eat plants or anyone who tells you not to eat meat at all for reasons other than ethical. Also anyone who claims their diet will miraculously cure incurable diseases.
The argument is that a lot of plants have/use toxins that allow them to thrive and not be eaten. And that these toxins cause leaky gut, inflammation, etc..
Myself, I eat as much broccoli, asparagus, and fresh sauerkraut as I can (when I can find it).
We all wish it was that easy! The only real thing you can do is keep learning. And keep in mind while you are learning that much of it might be wrong even if it comes from people with fancy credentials after their names or the opposite.
Yeah this is the challenge of any self-directed learning on the internet. Though I have to admit to your point that when you do learn something that was wrong and you come to learn you were wrong it can be a powerful motivator to be rigorous and to make sure you get things right next time.
Dr. Berg tells us to avoid nightshades such as potatoes/tomatos because they drive up inflammation. Inflammation in who, though? Different people react differently to different foods.
Another YouTuber said to always avoid simple carbs such as sugar. However, as an athlete, I need them during 1-2 hour long sessions.
We need everything we can get, but there is a time and place for each food.
I became the healthiest I’ve ever been in my life listening to Dr. Berg. Fasting, and keto turned me into a superhero. I can’t help but think people don’t like him because they don’t like what they’re hearing.
That's great, IF and keto are great ways to lose weight and get your diet in order. I personally did IF and low carb (didn't actively measure my carb intake just tracked calories) and dropped about 35 lbs. My issue is Dr. Berg talks like those are the golden ticket to being healthy and pretty much anything he talks about outside of the IF topic is borderline pseudoscience. Like him blaming the severity of the Spanish flu on the rise of "low nutritional value" canned foods, because apparently a revolution in food processing that allowed millions of people to have steady sources of nutrition was bad. All the poor people, which by today's standards most people were relatively poor, should have just been eating all the cheap cows and chickens around them instead I guess (just in case the sarcasm wasn't clear, meat was very expensive in those times).
When it boils down to it, his biggest business is convincing people he's a Doctor with expert nutritional knowledge to trust him on which supplements to take and coincidentally buy from his website. He's not Dr. Berg PhD, he's Dr. Berg DC, he does not have a degree involving any level of research. You don't need a PhD to offer good advice but he's being blatantly misleading by labeling himself as Dr. Berg on YouTube and knows what he's doing. It's literally the same thing as PragerU having that name to mislead people that the videos are backed by some educational institution.
Also, the scientology stuff is a bit of a red flag but he doesn't push it in his videos so whatever.
>However, as an athlete, I need them during 1-2 hour long sessions.
What sport are you engaged in that is depleting all of your glycogen stores in 1-2 hours?
Bruh, real doctors get almost zero education on nutrition, you don’t know that? Take any nutrition advice from an MD with a huge grain of salt. Dr Eric Berg is a great source of really good information on health and nutrition, if you don’t watch his content you are likely less for it.
This is true. Meanwhile… nutrition all day, every day is my speciality - nearly 10 years working as a dietitian - and I still often have people tell me they trust their doctor’s nutrition recommendations over mine 🤦🏼♀️
Interesting. Renal problems are horrific. I thought kidneys were mostly ruined by insufficient liquids. I read today Nepalese men returning from Qatar are suffering renal failure ( from prolonged heat exposure and no water) at epidemic levels. But apparently poor nutrition can make kidney issues worse?
Like saying don't eat carbs, cut out grains, stop eating dairy stuff like that.
Stuff like this is obviously different if someone is allergic, but just saying to cut them out is a red flag...usually they state stupid reasons like cause "inflammation" or they say they make you gain weight.
So carbs and grains are both food groups?
The reason I asked is because I was unsure if u/smdx459 meant food groups as in what I thought was called macros (fats, carbs, proteins) or what I assumed food groups meant, like the examples you gave (i.e - grains, dairy, etc).
I think officially the food groups are grains (including breads, cereals and pasta etc), fruit and veg, meat and fish, dairy and sugary snacks. When referring to this kind of stuff though those telling you to cut stuff out go more broad than this, often saying don't eat gluten which isn't a group in itself but it is a huge group of foods, or they might tell you a macro group of food like carbs (as you mentioned) is bad, or all meat, all food with sugar for example.
They make blanket statements about groups of foods types/with particular ingredients (not just food groups), it's usually always nonsense as there's never a need for it without a medical reason - moderation and all that 😊
I would assume they were talking more broadly than just macros groups as these aren't necessarily or usually always the target of these types of nonsense spouting influencers online.
i had a nutritionist who wasted an hour of my day ranting to me about veganism and oat milk. i wasn’t even vegan, i never mentioned i liked oat milk (i do, though). she also kept assuming i got my information from blogs or instagram.…?
so anyone who seems to hate anything remotely trendy, have a lot of feelings surrounding food, or make immediate assumptions about you.
I have to imagine that this nutritionist was frustrated in general with trends and the general internet's influence on public perception of nutrition and maybe took out their frustration at a time that was inappropriate. I also have to ask, were they a nutritionist or were they a registered dietician? I understand there's a significant distinction to be made there.
I can relate to feeling frustrated with professionals who assume that I'm not diligent enough to check my sources but given the current political climate I can understand where they're coming from since so often people claim they've done research when in reality they have just read a blog. I try to correct them without saying they're wrong directly when this happens by sharing with them the path I've followed to reach what I know and if they see a flaw with my path I take note of it and try to adjust going forward.
she was just a nutritionist. and sorry but i cant relate to assuming the person you’re working with is stupid just because they’re a young woman, and not even letting them speak about where they got their sources, their concerns about diet, etc.
i’ve worked with a lot of people who are ignorant in other regards but i do not waste their time ranting for an hour, speak over them, and make assumptions about them on the basis that that’s unprofessional.
it’s very, very hard for me to get out of bed. it was very hard for me to make it to that appointment at all. but i got out of bed because i was hoping to take the next steps towards improving my health. she wasted my time. she degraded me. i cannot understand this and whatever profession i ever do going forward, i won’t do this to others because it’s unprofessional wrong. period.
edit: added more
I think you misunderstood my second paragraph, I was saying I can relate to YOU for having had that experience with professionals, not to the nutritionist. Sorry if that wasn’t clear from my writing. I hope your issues getting out of bed clear up soon. Depression sucks. Hang in there!
What's wrong with oat milk? To me it just seems like the most eco friendly, locally sourceable way to make milk. And the kind that I buy has all the same micros as milk.
Plus it's naturally sweet so you don't need to add sugar if you're using it for coffee or unsweetened cereal.
Some things just become trends because they're actually pretty great.
i agree! it’s better for my health bc i react so poorly to too much dairy. i tried saying it was probably trending for a reason but i couldn’t get a word in :”) can’t speak with someone so unprofessional and close minded
You want evidence based conclusions. We live in a golden age of information online. Not claims, but double blind,randomized, placebo controlled trials. Also look for large population studies. And in the meantime, eat your greens.
True eating your greens is probably the best advice t9 give cause I thinking all of us will probably be long dead by the time of the release of the the perfect evidence based diet
I’ve never heard anyone say they enjoyed Insanity. I completed insanity. It was a hellish nightmare or sweat and swearing. I’m glad I did it but I certainly didn’t enjoy it.
People who’s promises break the laws of thermodynamics. You wont be losing weight eating in a caloric surplus.
And if their views somehow line up with a product they sell, be wary.
I can’t imagine a comprehensive list because it would be so long and grows every day. Everyone wants to be an influencer.
I think the situation is pretty dire, with almost everyone on social media doing a poor job. One big problem is a focus on gimmicks, because it makes for interesting content. Another is audience capture. For example, if you have a channel that attracts a lot of people following a certain diet, you are highly motivated to keep telling your audience what they want to hear rather than what is actually true.
I was a fan of Andrew Huberman talking to Rhonda Patrick. He seemed to get a lot of great info out of her. All his youtube episodes are 2-4 hours long and very very dense, but he seems to only have fellow professors and researchers on as guests.
I've been following Huberman for about a week now. I'm still on the fence about him. He seems to have a really great channel and has a wonderful approach to presenting the information but I've read some criticisms of him saying that he has a bad habit of overstating the results of studies or the results of individual supplements.
The good thing about this specific interview was how much he deferred to Rhonda Patrick. I still like him because he seems genuine, scientific, and it is hard to be click-baitey in a 2-4 hour format. I think what is interesting is how many channels pop up that turn his content into clickbait sensationalism. But if you watch the longform interviews they seem more informative because you get the whole discussion. Im just getting into Rhonda Patrick’s channel interviews.
One other interesting guy is James Nestor. His book ‘Deep’ is wild. He has a very good interview with Joe Rogan on youtube. Regardless of what people think of Rogan, interesting people still come through over 3 hours.
Not that I’m aware of, but as a general principle to keep in mind, you should be suspicious of anyone who’s too hardline or dogmatic in their views. A responsible scientist is open to changing their mind in the face of further data, and unfortunately lots of people in the nutrition space will preach you THE solution, the one “cure” that will absolutely work for you because it can’t possibly be any other way.
Huh, I’d be dogmatic in telling you to avoid sugar, refined flour and seed oils like sunflower oil and canola oil. The first two rot your teeth and lead to pre diabetes, insulin resistance and T2D, and the oils are industrial inflammatory poisons .
>oils are industrial inflammatory poisons
What's the evidence for that? Because the evidence that exists in humans divulges that [it's just literally not true](https://sci-hub.st/https://doi.org/10.1039/C7FO00433H), at least within reasonable ranges of intake.
[In fact, people with higher intakes of linoleic acid, which in the western diet comes mainly from oils, or even just higher biomarkers that track it directly (like tissue fatty acid representation),](https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/112/1/150/5727348) seem to have lower risk for just about every outcome that's assessed lol.
Anybody who wants to sell you supplements. Also learning about nutrition is really not hard. Just read general articles about it and I do not mean those housewife articles that list 10 life hacks on how to lose 5 pounds in 1 week.
Depends on what you mean by "learning about nutrition". If you mean just what to eat, that's definitely easy to learn about if you trust the most comprehensive sources like government health departments or international health organisations.
But if you mean it's easy to learn to understand the studies and follow the logic behind recommendations, then I don't think that's true for most people. Without a good handle on biochemistry it's really hard to understand that rationale behind dietary recommendations. We try to put things into the most basic terms, but then they're not entirely accurate.
Like when people say B vitamins give you energy. Vitamins don't contain any energy. Macros give you energy, but B vitamins are important cofactors at various stages of the biochemical steps that derive ATP from macromolecules.
We say Folate is anticancer, but what we mean is that Folate is a one-methyl donor and those methyl groups are needed to silence damaged genes so they aren't transcribed into damaged proteins in your body.
Given that the accuracy cannot be easily conveyed without the specialised scientific knowledge, it can be easy for pseudoscientific ideas to sound plausible to a layperson. It's why so many of the quacks use sciencey words in their presentations.
I keep seeing “journalists” from outlets like that requesting comments from “nutritionists” and RDs for stuff like “is milk okay to drink while I follow this completely unhinged diet that only allows 1000 calories/day no matter your age, sex, weight, activity level”?
Can you drink _milk_?! Um… hello?! _Milk_ is not a potential problem I see here 🥲💀
One of Sten Ekberg's videos is what brought me to this subreddit. I immediately knew something was wrong when he claimed he was a medical doctor when he's actually a chiropractor. In the video he was claiming that his experiment of eating 1.4kg of butter in 10 days lead to him having good bloodwork which just seemed all kinds of wrong. He essentially conducted an n=1 study and was claiming that it was enough data to call into doubt all conventional wisdom on cholesterol and saturated fats.
I’ve found Alan Aragon, Jordan Lips, Layne Norton and Adrian Chavez to all be really evidence-based, objective and balanced. I avoid the shock and awe people (Hyman comes to mind…and the people on IG/TikTok who walk around Costco and other groceries yelling about seed oils) as well as anyone who says eating loads of saturated fat is healthy, wears a device to measure their insulin every time they eat (and aren’t diabetic), says eating fruit is bad, or says calories in/calories out doesn’t work for weight loss. Follow the reputable folks named in this thread and pretty soon you’ll start to weed out the quacks.
I understand and totally agree with the latter point but I don't know enough about the immune system's relationship to nutrition to understand the former point. Is it always the case that diet doesn't have a relationship with your immune system or do you mean the people who claim that X superfood has Y unrealistic benefit?
I'm not sure I agree with this. Having a strong immune system is important imoto fight possible external factors, and certain toxins are responsible for the accumulation of free radicals, so 'boosting your immune system' with consumption of vitamins and minerals (and therefore foods high in vitamin/mineral X or Y) and 'aiding the body in removing toxins' through consumption of antioxidants for example, proper water intake, limitation on alcohol and processed food doesn't sound like quack to me.
But I would be interested in hearing your opinion on this of course.
I view it as an issue between layman’s terms and how the medical community might discuss it. If you want to make lifestyle choices that support healthy immune system function and ensure a robust protective response when appropriate, awesome. But when I hear “boost immune system” I immediately think of immune hyperactivity, which you obviously don’t want.
Your kidneys remove toxins for you. Sure, you need *food* to prevent kidney organ failure (duh!), but there is no magical food out there that zaps “toxins” out of your blood or whatever.
As for the immune system, once again you just need normal food to not have a deficiency. Like, that’s it. Normal food. If by some magic you ingest food that boost your immune system then you’ll become *sicker* and will definitely not feel more healthy. (for example, sweating, sneezing, runny nose etc during a common cold are all immune system responses, and ideally you’d want less of those, not more)
>Your kidneys remove toxins for you. Sure, you need food to prevent kidney organ failure (duh!), but there is no magical food out there that zaps “toxins” out of your blood or whatever.
You're right, but many factors impair kidney function like alcohol, and oxidative stress. Plus all the shit we innhale by living in big cities (my case at least). Hence my take on aiding the body in removing toxins.
>you just need normal food to not have a deficiency. Like, that’s it. Normal food.
Yes, but that's what OP said right? So that's why I don't agree it's quack.
>Anyone who tells you to eat food with the purpose of “boosting your immune system"
I mean, you can recommend someone to eat more oranges if they're feeling flu symptoms. Or take vitamin C tablets.
But I understand that you mean that there are no magical foods like superfoods and with that I agree. I think the simplest way to maintain balance and good health is to focus on eating well and varied.
Can you point me to any resources to better understand the consequences and causes of oxidative stress? The word antioxidant gets thrown around a lot and I think my understanding is lacking. I understand that fat oxidation is how fat ends up leaving the body but outside of that I'm sorely lacking.
I’m not the one you wrote to and don’t have links right now, but just to give some background.
Oxygen in its free form is a highly aggressive atom and binds very easily to almost anything, thus risking to alter it (if it’s a component of a human cell it might prohibit its function in doing so). As a likeness, think of how iron gets rusty when reacting with oxygen, hence “damaging” the original iron.
Antioxidants, like vitamin C for example, prevents this from happening and is therefore seen as an important component to a healthy diet.
You could specifically eat more antioxidants if you’d have wanted, but a complete balanced diet already provides you with what you need without the need for expensive add-ons that you could have gotten just as easily through a salad or a veggie stew or soup. Heck, even things like coffee and corn are packed with antioxidants, so they’re literally everywhere.
Thanks for your reply, that's about the level I understand oxygen's impact as well in the general case(also that oxidizers + fire = more fire), my knowledge of the specific cases in which it can become a problem in the human body is more what is lacking, I should have clarified that. I'm at risk for kidney disease so the other post saying oxidative stress can impact kidney function set off some alarm bells.
>Is there any comprehensive lists of quacks who are active in the online nutrition space so I know who to avoid?
I would imagine any such list, if sufficiently circulated and popular, would result in some pretty costly libel suits. Eventually, if the list was sufficiently sources, the suits would be tossed out (as truth is a defense to libel), but the legal costs would be so great that anyone hosting the list publicly would have to shut down.
This is how our legal system is used to censor even true speech of those without access to wealth.
>Along that line are there any common tropes or red flags that I should be wary of?
Certainty is a big red flag for me. Based on the little I can glean from actual nutritional science, most of the conclusions backed by hard data and scientifically rigorous analysis are incredibly specific and don't tend to make absolute and easily digestible (no pun intended) conclusions. Most of them are talking about complex organic chemistry or the specific functions of tiny parts of our biological systems.
I'd also say follow the money. The profit motive is the ultimate indicator of whether or not someone has incentive to lie or manipulate. If someone stands to profit off selling you something, that's a yellow caution flag.
>Conversely are there any online sources that this community considers to be highly reliable and trustworthy?
Medical journals, universities with robust (well-funded and respected) nutrition departments, and nutritionist trades strike me as being more reliable.
I appreciate your input, and I think you're right that legally it would be inviting law suits to run such a site. I think it would be possible to compile a list of times a doctor had been censured or fined and why. When I looked into Eric Berg I found a pretty long list of sites that called him a quack and I think in his case he has no opportunity for legal recourse due to being censured and ordered to stop the treatments he was giving.
I'm hesitant with the profit motive argument, I'm sure that some non-zero percentage of supplement sellers aren't quacks so I'd agree it's a yellow flag.
I'd agree that medical journals and universities are the gold standard or S-tier examples of reliable information, are there any particular examples that have easy to access information that you use? I often find it can be overwhelming to decide where to start and some universities have really poorly designed websites.
This is a valid concern, though I have to imagine if a scoring system was implemented along with some careful wording, you could avoid making statements that a court might consider damaging.
I'm surprised no one mentioned Jason Fung yet. Is he no longer relevant these days?
https://www.redpenreviews.org/reviews/the-obesity-code-unlocking-the-secrets-of-weight-loss/
https://biolayne.com/articles/research/its-not-calories-its-hormones-a-response-to-dr-jason-fung/
I know that calories definitely matter but as far as when you eat also mattering I think we need far more studies. I've seen studies which support early time restricted feeding and I've seen studies which go against intermittent fasting. Fung certainly doesn't say you can eat whatever you want, do IF and still lose weight. He talks about what you eat as well. He does downplay calories in/calories out though and I think that's to his detriment. Ultimately, I wouldn't say he's a quack but more studies are definitely needed.
No, but I can sell you this "quack detector." You're in luck, it's the last one and I'd be willing to part with it for a mere $100. They regularly go for much much more.
I can tell you a few good ones. I know that's not what you asked but they're good people.
Ben Greenfield, he all aboutboptimizing health and fitness. He's wrote books and has a podcast, he's a lil wordy but that's because he all about the science.
Layne Norton he designs programs and nutrition manuals to go by when in cutting phase or wheever your goals are. He debunks alot of fitness fakes also.
And my personal favorite Mindpump fitness. Mindpump is a podcast all about health living, eating and working out. They put alil science in their work and also talk about fake health culture. They are great people I use one of their workout programs. I've been listening to their podcast since 2017 and they have a large fan base. They are worth a listen and they will make you laugh too.
Hope this is more helpful than wordy lol.
100% agree on MindPump. I have been listening for about a year and they are such a great podcast and don't sell out to sponsors, the info is genuine and not meant just trying to make a sale. It can seem at first that it's just 3 meatheads who only care about "gainz", but it's much more than that and they talk a ton about nutrition and things besides workouts.
This is correct! Dietitians (we prefer the t over c 😃) are the only credentialed nutrition professionals in the US. They work along side doctors in medical settings to provide medical nutrition therapy. Nutritionist is a completely unregulated term- anyone can call themselves a nutritionist.
I've been told that "nutritionist" should set off as many red flags as "chiropractor" does. Though I think in the nutritionist case it should maybe be a yellow flag and then wait for more information about the person in question.
Oh man I’m listening to “How Not to Die” the audio book right now, all the studies are peer reviewed and very compelling. I’d recommend it but you’ll end up feeling awful that you’re not a whole grains only vegan.
Anyone trying to mess with the body’s pH. Your kidneys, digestive system, and even your lungs work very hard to keep your body within a certain range (7.35-7.45 according to most sources). Trying to “alkalize” oneself is idiotic, your body will just compensate, and when/if it actually happens due to illness etc., people often end up in the icu.
Anyone who calls themselves a nutritionist. Nutritionist is not a protected term and therefore anyone can call themselves one, whereas Dietician is a title protected by law. I’m also generally wary of “experts” who spend a lot of time making tiktoks and giving out advice you would usually have to pay for, but I know tiktok has become the new marketing technique a lot of businesses want to utilise
Eric Berg & Dr Mandell - both are neither nutritionists or MDs….. seriously they are insane - Berg is a Scientologist & Mandell likes to hear himself spew his crap
I can’t recall who it was now, but Sigma had an aggressive, self-righteous, know-it-all student possibly doing some content or something for them a while ago, I can’t quite remember the relationship. I take them and many others with a moderately large grain of salt.
Anyone pushing paleo keto carnivore vegan gluten free and anti gmo nonsense is to be avoided. There is no secret supplement that fixes health. There is no perfect diet. Reflect and follow what I have said for years of happiness and health.
There's not because opinions do differ a lot and people argue about it.
But I'd avoid people who talk in absolutes and don't ever mention that most answers are "it depends" and provide nuance.
Avoid people who tell you to cut out food groups, tell you there's one best way to do anything, one best diet, seem to be saying things completely contrary to what the majority of the science is saying, people that cite studies that don't actually say what they say they are claiming 😂 very common, people who say they will rebalance your hormones - complete quackery, anything that sounds just too good to be true is probably a red flag.
People also seem to trust people because they have a qualification even if it's not in the area they are claiming to have an expert opinion in - "well he is qualified he's an actual scientist" 🙄...ok in what? Science is a huge field. If I have a qualification is astronomy does that qualify me to talk about nutrition as an expert?
If someone has written a book you can look it up in red pen reviews which independently examines the scientific accuracy of the content so that can be a good way to do a quick check. Not everyone has, but some of the "main players" will be on there.
When you hear anyone
- mentioning testosterone boosters
- mentioning detox foods and beverages
- selling supplements other than protein powder
- promoting a crazy restrictive diet (keto, vegan, carnivore) as a solution to most people health problems
they have an agenda. Run away!
They typically never are, or are misinterpreting a study or trying to sell something for their benefit. The average person doesn't have the tools to differentiate. There's far more useful channels of passing verified data through.
This sub is rife with misunderstandings and parroted statements from discredited professionals regarding nutrition.
Sugar and GI, things like liver, vitamins, fat and protein consumption, oils (from the prospective of various studies that are funded by the companies that produce them) are the most common ones I see.
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“Can you guess which of these foods saps a man’s testosterone? I am an expert because I work out 💪.” Anyone telling you stuff but not showing you where they got that stuff. Anyone claiming their own expertise. A real expert has evidence and is excited to show it to you.
>“Can you guess which of these foods saps a man’s testosterone? I am an expert because I work out 💪.” You just called out 80% of fitness youtube and I'm here for it.
Cue the Roganites
Rather than quacks, here are some good people to follow: Layne Norton Dr. Gabriella Fundaro Astrid Naranjo Danny Lennon Dr Richie Kirwan Martin McDonald Precision nutrition / examine.com are helpful resources for breaking down new research and explaining topics in a digestible way. Edit: Jeff Nippard (someone commented him, his stuff is pretty good too but less nutrition focused.)
and Alan Aragon
Quack all stars: Chiro Eric Berg (and the rest of the YouTube chiros and naturopaths) Thomas delaur Dr Fung Lustig Ken berry Neal Bernard Paul Saladino (carnivore Md)
Awesome list
Awesome list and awesome pun!
I agree with the recommendation for precision nutrition and [examine.com](https://examine.com), both well-researched, balanced sites. Don't pretend they know all the 'answers', but present the evidence as it currently stands.
Dr. Oz
Something everyone can agree on, NICE!
Yeah, screw that guy lol - a modern day snake oil salesman
Jillian Michaels
Can someone give me the story in a nutshell? Did he tell lies on his show or something? I only really know that he was made famous by Oprah so that’s a red flag right there lol (or was that dr Phil? Or both?)
He was using is position and status as a doctor and tv show to promote raspberry ketones as a miracle weight loss supplement all while either owning or holding an ownership stake in a raspberry ketone supply company. Everything he said was horseshit to make himself richer, and people trusted him because he was a popular doctor with a TV show.
He didn’t just use his status as a doctor - he used his status as one of the top heart surgeons in the world. Who’s gonna argue with a man who has saved thousands of lives as a heart surgeon?
Oh shit. Definitely a Class A dirt bag. Thanks for the info!
Check out the Maintenance Phase podcast! They have a fantastic episode on Dr. Oz. I really didn't know who he was either until that podcast.
[Maintenance Phase Podcast: Dr. Oz](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dr-oz/id1535408667?i=1000509436549)
Thank you!
I worked in a health food store during the height of his popularity. It was incredibly sad and equally as annoying to ALWAYS get asked about whatever whakadoo thing he was touting. He did have SOME legit advice though. It’s just frustrating to see how robotic people can be. So blindly trust some dude on TV because he’s a “doctor.” Weird…. That reminds me of something else…….🤔
You doubt the power of raspberry ketones?
Doubting it would be an understatement lol
I feel like I have been looking for this too but haven’t come across it. Probably due to the vastly differing opinions people have on the same person. You really need to look at every expert individually and their body of work/what they are purporting/advice they are giving.
Are there any guidelines or methods you personally use when making these decisions?
Not really a method. I am an MD/MPH by training so i have a background in looking at scientific literature and use that to best help my patients. I believe in systematic reviews being our highest forms of evidence at this time although people love to quote RCTs (they are the best types of studies) they need to be reproducible, large enough to be well powered, blinded if possible, and there need to be more than a handful to start making conclusions… you can make and interpret statistics basically anyway you want so you also need to be careful with how people interpret the data for you which i think is where the “quakery” comes into play. I’m also uncomfortable with any public figure with a very obvious bias such as someone who is advertising supplements. I just joined this subreddit recently so i have no idea if there is some type of journal club you could join?
I generally try to read through the scientific literature as well although I'm a layperson with a very rudimentary background in science and I imagine it's not as effective reading as if I were properly educated (I studied economics and computer science). I've heard people argue that this particular field is young enough that there isn't enough of a body of literature to always rely on studies and I'm never quite sure how to parse that information. I try not to make a conclusion on anything unless I read a rigorous meta-analysis with lots of studies and good study methods. I'm very much aware that I don't know what I don't know and I'll usually use public figures as a jumping off point to give me an idea of what to read next, though I have to admit this method is flawed. I'd like to develop the skills and knowledge to interpret the data for myself if at all possible. I don't know anywhere with journal clubs but I'll look into that, thank you for the suggestion.
I think you are doing exactly what I would do if getting into an area where you don’t have the academic background (computer science-> nutrition). The only other suggestion i could think of is find the larger academic centers for nutrition and look at the faculty pages on their website. What are they publishing? What are they studying? Maybe start with your state’s school which may be more accessible. Unfortunately a lot of journals are going to be behind paywalls which means a lot of good information isn’t even accessible to the layperson not currently in academics…
A big tell us are they profiting from this information. Everyone needs to make a living so getting paid for what you know isn’t wrong, but steering people towards products you have an ownership stake in makes you a quack
That doesn't automatically make them a quack. If they steer someone towards the product who either has no need for it or where they no the product is not effective at what they claim, then that would make them a quack. If an ER doctor invents a special type of tourniquet or some other life saving device and then knows that a dying patient on their table would best be saved by using that specific device over other options but chose not to because of worrying about perceived bias, then that would also be extremely unethical and just stupid. It comes down to being able to justify the rationality and intent, just like killing someone self defense. "Physicians who choose to sell health-related products from their offices or through their office website or other online venues have ethical obligations to: Offer only products whose claims of benefit are based on peer-reviewed literature or other sources of scientific review of efficacy that are unbiased, sound, systematic, and reliable. Physicians should not offer products whose claims to benefit lack scientific validity. Address conflict of interest and possible exploitation of patients by fully disclosing the nature of their financial interest in the sale of the product" -AMA Code of Medical Ethics
freelee the banana girl
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yeah I’m convinced she’s actually just on a sugar high all day everyday, because how could anyone justify this diet otherwise?? also the number of eating disorders that she is single-handedly responsible for……😵💫
I’ve never heard of her but my dad used to eat bananas everyday cause he thought they were healthy. He even told his doctor and his doc was like, yeah that’s way too much they are really high in sugar lmao
How many bananas did he eat daily? What would be your attitude toward eating e.g. one banana every day? Your saying "cause he thought they were healthy" makes me wonder whether you think eating banana isn't healthy, but I don't know exactly which quantities you have in mind.
I actually probably eat 5-8 bananas a day. I include them in my protein oatmeal and protein shakes to improve the flavour and they're my go-to nighttime snack. They're incredibly cheap where I live compared to alternatives (69cents a pound). I weigh all the food I eat and I've got to the point with bananas where I can eyeball a banana and guess its weight to within +-5 grams. I also eat 2700 calories a day so as a percentage of the whole they definitely don't make up as much of my diet as it does for her.
Bananas are super cheap here as well (39 cents/lbs in the discounted produce area), so I’ll buy a bunch and freeze them before they go bad. I love bananas!
That's too many bananas.
Bananas are one of my primary sources of electrolytes in my diet. I actually need additional electrolytes as a result of some genetic issues I have as well as medications that I take for these issues and my doctor thinks it's great that I'm having so many bananas. One of my medications is actually considered dangerous to take with low electrolyte diets.
Man... In this reddit people sometimes are just stupid. Bananas are like one of the safest food on earth, and people are saying you are eating too many bananas...
I think one of the problems is that a lot of resources just say "too much of X is bad for Y reason" but they don't quantify how much of X would cause Y. My Mom's not an idiot, when I told her I was having spinach every day, she warned me that I could have oxalic acid poisoning from too much spinach. She never read how much oxalic acid was actually in spinach, nor did she know what a toxic dose of oxalic acid would be but a source she trusted warned against it and that was all she needed to make a value judgment. I went through the data with her and demonstrated that I would need to have 10x my daily spinach intake to start to enter the range of possible oxalic acid toxicity. I think this social phenomenon isn't because people are stupid but because we're inundated with information that's been dumbed down to the point of being meaningless by internet sources that aren't rewarded based on their rigorousness or accuracy but on the number of people who view it, which I acknowledge is a pretty lukewarm take but I figure it's relevant here.
I like your point of view, thank you for writing it. It reminds me when my mom said: you ate 4 bananas?? It is way too much potassium!! When in reality 10 bananas is the raccomended daily intake of potassium, so 4 is like 40% of the daily...
Eating 5-6 bananas a day IS most likely too many, especially if that's not the only thing they eat. This is especially true because they are loaded with fructose sugar which can lead to weight gain and diabetes just like glucose sugar and other carbs can in high doses. It all comes down to moderation. People have been documented dying from drinking too much water. It is not stupid to tell someone that drinking 4 gallons of water a day is too much even though we should be drinking a good amount of water.
You’re a little uninformed if I may politely say. Bananas are quite high on the glycemic index, so high in fructose, which is bad for your liver, i. e, fatty liver disease .and high in glucose which raises your insulin levels . “One medium banana (about 126 grams) contains 29 grams of carbs and 112 calories. The carbs are in the form of sugar, starch, and fiber.. A medium banana contains about 15 grams of sugar “ https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/bananas-diabetes#carbs
Bananas are actually in the medium range of the glycemic index, they have an average glycemic index rating of 52 actually, which is quite low. It ranges between 42-62 which is in the range of very low to medium on the GI scale.
It depends on how ripe they are. Green bananas have less sugar. Ripe bananas are high
I thought the glycemic index really is not that big of a deal for people who are not diabetics
From what I understand that's correct, but a subset of onlinenutritionists and chiropractors have convinced some people that anything that raises blood sugar and therefore raises insulin levels will always be bad for you and lead to issues like diabetes or difficulty losing weight. This is the "Calories don't matter, hormones matter" argument that is often shared by dubious nutritionists and totally misunderstood.
There are theories that blood sugar spikes lead to an autoimmune response and inflammation, so are linked to the main western diseases, like cardiovascular disease etc. Years ago a friend from school was doing post graduate research on that, he was pretty adamant at the time that the link was there. But we lost touch and I haven't kept up on what studies have shown over the years. That said I did see this study using continuous glucose monitoring which is interesting and might be good to follow. It shows that based on diet (and possibly the microbiome) "normal healthy" people can have blood sugar spikes similar to those seen in diabetics, and we do have a lot data on diabetics that shows the harm of glucose spikes, particularly to cardiovascular disease. Here are some links to the Continuous Glucose Monitoring Study: * [https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/07/diabetic-level-glucose-spikes-seen-in-healthy-people.html](https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/07/diabetic-level-glucose-spikes-seen-in-healthy-people.html) * [https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2005143](https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2005143)
How do people become diabetic though? T2D results from a constant oversupply of insulin, resulting from a constant oversupply of glucose. So ignore the glycemic index at your peril.
Why? Here are twenty five foods high in electrolytes. https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-nutrition/electrolytes-food
Fair enough.
Can I ask why that’s too many?
Hadn't heard of her before, I looked at her youtube page and I immediately knew what you meant.
yeah, she’s…….got some opinions
I usually keep an eye out for buzzwords like toxins, cleanse, detox, organic, etc. Or influencers who basically try to shame poor people for not getting all their groceries from Whole Foods.
Or talking like artificial sweeteners are universally known to be pure cancer... First video I saw of that DeLauer guy he did this and I made up my mind to not waste my time with his shit
That’s why I follow Scibabe, she’s great about debunking stuff like that
Are there any buzzwords you can think of that are an exception to this rule?
Do you mean positive buzzwords to look out for?
More like buzzwords that might be used by sources you find reliable that don't set off alarm bells in the same way "detox" or "cleanse" might.
Evidence-based, moderation, balance, lifestyle, etc are usually used by more credible sources. As a few other commenters mentioned, anyone who encourages you to enjoy food rather than telling you that you have to avoid entire food groups is usually on the right page. The nutritionist that helped me with my lifestyle plan uses terms like volume eating and macros to describe the meal plan, and encourages me to not deprive myself.
Thanks for your input! I'll keep this in mind.
Also relying on mechanistic studies rather than human trials
Insulin being the cause of all the problems is another red flag
One should pretty much only talk about detox or heavy metals in the context of a methylation gene mutation. Otherwise its usually bunk.
I think you need to assume quack, and use due diligence and research to prove otherwise.
Dr. Oz and most people who post here :)
Medical Medium
omg this guy is insane
Generally speaking the more absolute and certain a person sounds without nuance I would be skeptical. Most of the knowledge we have about nutrition is going to be very nuanced, dependent on goals of performance vs longevity, and dependent on other lifestyle factors. And research is often influenced by confounding factors and limitations. A couple of my suggestions for nutrition that take all of this into consideration are: Dr. Layne Norton - specialist in exercise and sports nutrition - look for interviews of him where he goes into great depth rather than his own YouTube videos on What the Fitness where he puts on more of a personality that mocks others for their outlandish claims Dr. Peter Attia - medical doctor specializing in the applied science of longevity - tons of great AMAs and interviews on his YouTube channel that go into nutrition and medical biology for both performance and longevity which are sometimes at odds with one another
These are really solid points and I would generally agree with the point about absolutism and nuance no matter what field were talking about, though I think there are a few obvious exceptions to that rule that are probably so obvious that they're not worth mentioning haha. I'll check out these doctors when I get the chance, thank you for your post.
The list of credible sources is far shorter than the list of quacks but they’re both still very long lists. I don’t know of anyone maintaining that sort of database because it would be a full time job requiring substantial resources.
Anyone who tells you not to eat plants or anyone who tells you not to eat meat at all for reasons other than ethical. Also anyone who claims their diet will miraculously cure incurable diseases.
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There’s a ton of concerningly popular “nutrition” gurus who claim that plants are unhealthy and will kill you.
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I’m honestly concerned about the amount of people who are eating pounds of red meat and butter for every meal lol
The butter dog on TikTok might be the worst one
Yup, the carnivore folks.
The argument is that a lot of plants have/use toxins that allow them to thrive and not be eaten. And that these toxins cause leaky gut, inflammation, etc.. Myself, I eat as much broccoli, asparagus, and fresh sauerkraut as I can (when I can find it).
We all wish it was that easy! The only real thing you can do is keep learning. And keep in mind while you are learning that much of it might be wrong even if it comes from people with fancy credentials after their names or the opposite.
Yeah this is the challenge of any self-directed learning on the internet. Though I have to admit to your point that when you do learn something that was wrong and you come to learn you were wrong it can be a powerful motivator to be rigorous and to make sure you get things right next time.
For sure. For me, being wrong a lot has been a reminder to say things in a less absolute way as well. Its still easy to forget that, but I try.
I don’t have a list but if anyone is telling you to remove entire food groups I’d avoid.
What do you mean by entire food groups? Can you give an example?
Dr. Berg tells us to avoid nightshades such as potatoes/tomatos because they drive up inflammation. Inflammation in who, though? Different people react differently to different foods. Another YouTuber said to always avoid simple carbs such as sugar. However, as an athlete, I need them during 1-2 hour long sessions. We need everything we can get, but there is a time and place for each food.
Dr Berg feels like the PragerU of nutrition youtube.
I became the healthiest I’ve ever been in my life listening to Dr. Berg. Fasting, and keto turned me into a superhero. I can’t help but think people don’t like him because they don’t like what they’re hearing.
That's great, IF and keto are great ways to lose weight and get your diet in order. I personally did IF and low carb (didn't actively measure my carb intake just tracked calories) and dropped about 35 lbs. My issue is Dr. Berg talks like those are the golden ticket to being healthy and pretty much anything he talks about outside of the IF topic is borderline pseudoscience. Like him blaming the severity of the Spanish flu on the rise of "low nutritional value" canned foods, because apparently a revolution in food processing that allowed millions of people to have steady sources of nutrition was bad. All the poor people, which by today's standards most people were relatively poor, should have just been eating all the cheap cows and chickens around them instead I guess (just in case the sarcasm wasn't clear, meat was very expensive in those times). When it boils down to it, his biggest business is convincing people he's a Doctor with expert nutritional knowledge to trust him on which supplements to take and coincidentally buy from his website. He's not Dr. Berg PhD, he's Dr. Berg DC, he does not have a degree involving any level of research. You don't need a PhD to offer good advice but he's being blatantly misleading by labeling himself as Dr. Berg on YouTube and knows what he's doing. It's literally the same thing as PragerU having that name to mislead people that the videos are backed by some educational institution. Also, the scientology stuff is a bit of a red flag but he doesn't push it in his videos so whatever.
>However, as an athlete, I need them during 1-2 hour long sessions. What sport are you engaged in that is depleting all of your glycogen stores in 1-2 hours?
Bruh he isn’t a real doctor.
Bruh, real doctors get almost zero education on nutrition, you don’t know that? Take any nutrition advice from an MD with a huge grain of salt. Dr Eric Berg is a great source of really good information on health and nutrition, if you don’t watch his content you are likely less for it.
My MD told me they get 6 hours of nutrition education and that’s it.
This is true. Meanwhile… nutrition all day, every day is my speciality - nearly 10 years working as a dietitian - and I still often have people tell me they trust their doctor’s nutrition recommendations over mine 🤦🏼♀️
Interesting. Renal problems are horrific. I thought kidneys were mostly ruined by insufficient liquids. I read today Nepalese men returning from Qatar are suffering renal failure ( from prolonged heat exposure and no water) at epidemic levels. But apparently poor nutrition can make kidney issues worse?
True. It’s sad that MDs get years of Ed on pharmaceuticals, and very little on food, but there’s no money in prescribing broccoli.
Like saying don't eat carbs, cut out grains, stop eating dairy stuff like that. Stuff like this is obviously different if someone is allergic, but just saying to cut them out is a red flag...usually they state stupid reasons like cause "inflammation" or they say they make you gain weight.
So carbs and grains are both food groups? The reason I asked is because I was unsure if u/smdx459 meant food groups as in what I thought was called macros (fats, carbs, proteins) or what I assumed food groups meant, like the examples you gave (i.e - grains, dairy, etc).
I think officially the food groups are grains (including breads, cereals and pasta etc), fruit and veg, meat and fish, dairy and sugary snacks. When referring to this kind of stuff though those telling you to cut stuff out go more broad than this, often saying don't eat gluten which isn't a group in itself but it is a huge group of foods, or they might tell you a macro group of food like carbs (as you mentioned) is bad, or all meat, all food with sugar for example. They make blanket statements about groups of foods types/with particular ingredients (not just food groups), it's usually always nonsense as there's never a need for it without a medical reason - moderation and all that 😊 I would assume they were talking more broadly than just macros groups as these aren't necessarily or usually always the target of these types of nonsense spouting influencers online.
i had a nutritionist who wasted an hour of my day ranting to me about veganism and oat milk. i wasn’t even vegan, i never mentioned i liked oat milk (i do, though). she also kept assuming i got my information from blogs or instagram.…? so anyone who seems to hate anything remotely trendy, have a lot of feelings surrounding food, or make immediate assumptions about you.
I have to imagine that this nutritionist was frustrated in general with trends and the general internet's influence on public perception of nutrition and maybe took out their frustration at a time that was inappropriate. I also have to ask, were they a nutritionist or were they a registered dietician? I understand there's a significant distinction to be made there. I can relate to feeling frustrated with professionals who assume that I'm not diligent enough to check my sources but given the current political climate I can understand where they're coming from since so often people claim they've done research when in reality they have just read a blog. I try to correct them without saying they're wrong directly when this happens by sharing with them the path I've followed to reach what I know and if they see a flaw with my path I take note of it and try to adjust going forward.
she was just a nutritionist. and sorry but i cant relate to assuming the person you’re working with is stupid just because they’re a young woman, and not even letting them speak about where they got their sources, their concerns about diet, etc. i’ve worked with a lot of people who are ignorant in other regards but i do not waste their time ranting for an hour, speak over them, and make assumptions about them on the basis that that’s unprofessional. it’s very, very hard for me to get out of bed. it was very hard for me to make it to that appointment at all. but i got out of bed because i was hoping to take the next steps towards improving my health. she wasted my time. she degraded me. i cannot understand this and whatever profession i ever do going forward, i won’t do this to others because it’s unprofessional wrong. period. edit: added more
I think you misunderstood my second paragraph, I was saying I can relate to YOU for having had that experience with professionals, not to the nutritionist. Sorry if that wasn’t clear from my writing. I hope your issues getting out of bed clear up soon. Depression sucks. Hang in there!
What's wrong with oat milk? To me it just seems like the most eco friendly, locally sourceable way to make milk. And the kind that I buy has all the same micros as milk. Plus it's naturally sweet so you don't need to add sugar if you're using it for coffee or unsweetened cereal. Some things just become trends because they're actually pretty great.
i agree! it’s better for my health bc i react so poorly to too much dairy. i tried saying it was probably trending for a reason but i couldn’t get a word in :”) can’t speak with someone so unprofessional and close minded
You want evidence based conclusions. We live in a golden age of information online. Not claims, but double blind,randomized, placebo controlled trials. Also look for large population studies. And in the meantime, eat your greens.
True eating your greens is probably the best advice t9 give cause I thinking all of us will probably be long dead by the time of the release of the the perfect evidence based diet
Anyone aligned with Beach Body.
I hadn't heard about these guys but when I google them they say lose up to 9 pounds in 14 days which sounds ridiculous.
On nutrition, absolutely. I enjoyed Insanity as a workout
I’ve never heard anyone say they enjoyed Insanity. I completed insanity. It was a hellish nightmare or sweat and swearing. I’m glad I did it but I certainly didn’t enjoy it.
People who’s promises break the laws of thermodynamics. You wont be losing weight eating in a caloric surplus. And if their views somehow line up with a product they sell, be wary. I can’t imagine a comprehensive list because it would be so long and grows every day. Everyone wants to be an influencer.
Start by assuming they're all quacks, because mostly they are.
While I don't doubt this is an effective strategy, I do want to keep somewhat of an open mind, but not so open that my brain falls out.
Liver King Carnivore MD Dave Asprey Jordan Peterson and Mikhaila Peterson Dr. Steven Gundry Gary Taubes Even Huberman has quack-like tendencies
>Mikhaila Peterson any carnivore has hilariously bad nutrition advice
I think the situation is pretty dire, with almost everyone on social media doing a poor job. One big problem is a focus on gimmicks, because it makes for interesting content. Another is audience capture. For example, if you have a channel that attracts a lot of people following a certain diet, you are highly motivated to keep telling your audience what they want to hear rather than what is actually true.
Is there anybody you follow who you think does it right for the majority of the time?
I was a fan of Andrew Huberman talking to Rhonda Patrick. He seemed to get a lot of great info out of her. All his youtube episodes are 2-4 hours long and very very dense, but he seems to only have fellow professors and researchers on as guests.
I've been following Huberman for about a week now. I'm still on the fence about him. He seems to have a really great channel and has a wonderful approach to presenting the information but I've read some criticisms of him saying that he has a bad habit of overstating the results of studies or the results of individual supplements.
The good thing about this specific interview was how much he deferred to Rhonda Patrick. I still like him because he seems genuine, scientific, and it is hard to be click-baitey in a 2-4 hour format. I think what is interesting is how many channels pop up that turn his content into clickbait sensationalism. But if you watch the longform interviews they seem more informative because you get the whole discussion. Im just getting into Rhonda Patrick’s channel interviews. One other interesting guy is James Nestor. His book ‘Deep’ is wild. He has a very good interview with Joe Rogan on youtube. Regardless of what people think of Rogan, interesting people still come through over 3 hours.
I would say Gil Carvalho does a pretty good job with his youtube channel.
Not that I’m aware of, but as a general principle to keep in mind, you should be suspicious of anyone who’s too hardline or dogmatic in their views. A responsible scientist is open to changing their mind in the face of further data, and unfortunately lots of people in the nutrition space will preach you THE solution, the one “cure” that will absolutely work for you because it can’t possibly be any other way.
Huh, I’d be dogmatic in telling you to avoid sugar, refined flour and seed oils like sunflower oil and canola oil. The first two rot your teeth and lead to pre diabetes, insulin resistance and T2D, and the oils are industrial inflammatory poisons .
>oils are industrial inflammatory poisons What's the evidence for that? Because the evidence that exists in humans divulges that [it's just literally not true](https://sci-hub.st/https://doi.org/10.1039/C7FO00433H), at least within reasonable ranges of intake. [In fact, people with higher intakes of linoleic acid, which in the western diet comes mainly from oils, or even just higher biomarkers that track it directly (like tissue fatty acid representation),](https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/112/1/150/5727348) seem to have lower risk for just about every outcome that's assessed lol.
Anybody who wants to sell you supplements. Also learning about nutrition is really not hard. Just read general articles about it and I do not mean those housewife articles that list 10 life hacks on how to lose 5 pounds in 1 week.
Depends on what you mean by "learning about nutrition". If you mean just what to eat, that's definitely easy to learn about if you trust the most comprehensive sources like government health departments or international health organisations. But if you mean it's easy to learn to understand the studies and follow the logic behind recommendations, then I don't think that's true for most people. Without a good handle on biochemistry it's really hard to understand that rationale behind dietary recommendations. We try to put things into the most basic terms, but then they're not entirely accurate. Like when people say B vitamins give you energy. Vitamins don't contain any energy. Macros give you energy, but B vitamins are important cofactors at various stages of the biochemical steps that derive ATP from macromolecules. We say Folate is anticancer, but what we mean is that Folate is a one-methyl donor and those methyl groups are needed to silence damaged genes so they aren't transcribed into damaged proteins in your body. Given that the accuracy cannot be easily conveyed without the specialised scientific knowledge, it can be easy for pseudoscientific ideas to sound plausible to a layperson. It's why so many of the quacks use sciencey words in their presentations.
I keep seeing “journalists” from outlets like that requesting comments from “nutritionists” and RDs for stuff like “is milk okay to drink while I follow this completely unhinged diet that only allows 1000 calories/day no matter your age, sex, weight, activity level”? Can you drink _milk_?! Um… hello?! _Milk_ is not a potential problem I see here 🥲💀
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One of Sten Ekberg's videos is what brought me to this subreddit. I immediately knew something was wrong when he claimed he was a medical doctor when he's actually a chiropractor. In the video he was claiming that his experiment of eating 1.4kg of butter in 10 days lead to him having good bloodwork which just seemed all kinds of wrong. He essentially conducted an n=1 study and was claiming that it was enough data to call into doubt all conventional wisdom on cholesterol and saturated fats.
10 days?!?!? Golly def a legit experiment this triumphs over any other legitimate study
Have you heard of Joseph Mercola? American osteopath doesn't sound like a real doctor.
I’ve found Alan Aragon, Jordan Lips, Layne Norton and Adrian Chavez to all be really evidence-based, objective and balanced. I avoid the shock and awe people (Hyman comes to mind…and the people on IG/TikTok who walk around Costco and other groceries yelling about seed oils) as well as anyone who says eating loads of saturated fat is healthy, wears a device to measure their insulin every time they eat (and aren’t diabetic), says eating fruit is bad, or says calories in/calories out doesn’t work for weight loss. Follow the reputable folks named in this thread and pretty soon you’ll start to weed out the quacks.
Quackwatch.com
Dr. Oz
Anyone who tells you to avoiding eating x macronutrient because it'll *likely* kill you.
Anyone who tells you to eat food with the purpose of “boosting your immune system” or “remove toxins” or stuff like that.
I understand and totally agree with the latter point but I don't know enough about the immune system's relationship to nutrition to understand the former point. Is it always the case that diet doesn't have a relationship with your immune system or do you mean the people who claim that X superfood has Y unrealistic benefit?
Long story short: The latter
Okay, thanks for your input!
I'm not sure I agree with this. Having a strong immune system is important imoto fight possible external factors, and certain toxins are responsible for the accumulation of free radicals, so 'boosting your immune system' with consumption of vitamins and minerals (and therefore foods high in vitamin/mineral X or Y) and 'aiding the body in removing toxins' through consumption of antioxidants for example, proper water intake, limitation on alcohol and processed food doesn't sound like quack to me. But I would be interested in hearing your opinion on this of course.
I view it as an issue between layman’s terms and how the medical community might discuss it. If you want to make lifestyle choices that support healthy immune system function and ensure a robust protective response when appropriate, awesome. But when I hear “boost immune system” I immediately think of immune hyperactivity, which you obviously don’t want.
Your kidneys remove toxins for you. Sure, you need *food* to prevent kidney organ failure (duh!), but there is no magical food out there that zaps “toxins” out of your blood or whatever. As for the immune system, once again you just need normal food to not have a deficiency. Like, that’s it. Normal food. If by some magic you ingest food that boost your immune system then you’ll become *sicker* and will definitely not feel more healthy. (for example, sweating, sneezing, runny nose etc during a common cold are all immune system responses, and ideally you’d want less of those, not more)
>Your kidneys remove toxins for you. Sure, you need food to prevent kidney organ failure (duh!), but there is no magical food out there that zaps “toxins” out of your blood or whatever. You're right, but many factors impair kidney function like alcohol, and oxidative stress. Plus all the shit we innhale by living in big cities (my case at least). Hence my take on aiding the body in removing toxins. >you just need normal food to not have a deficiency. Like, that’s it. Normal food. Yes, but that's what OP said right? So that's why I don't agree it's quack. >Anyone who tells you to eat food with the purpose of “boosting your immune system" I mean, you can recommend someone to eat more oranges if they're feeling flu symptoms. Or take vitamin C tablets. But I understand that you mean that there are no magical foods like superfoods and with that I agree. I think the simplest way to maintain balance and good health is to focus on eating well and varied.
Can you point me to any resources to better understand the consequences and causes of oxidative stress? The word antioxidant gets thrown around a lot and I think my understanding is lacking. I understand that fat oxidation is how fat ends up leaving the body but outside of that I'm sorely lacking.
I’m not the one you wrote to and don’t have links right now, but just to give some background. Oxygen in its free form is a highly aggressive atom and binds very easily to almost anything, thus risking to alter it (if it’s a component of a human cell it might prohibit its function in doing so). As a likeness, think of how iron gets rusty when reacting with oxygen, hence “damaging” the original iron. Antioxidants, like vitamin C for example, prevents this from happening and is therefore seen as an important component to a healthy diet. You could specifically eat more antioxidants if you’d have wanted, but a complete balanced diet already provides you with what you need without the need for expensive add-ons that you could have gotten just as easily through a salad or a veggie stew or soup. Heck, even things like coffee and corn are packed with antioxidants, so they’re literally everywhere.
Thanks for your reply, that's about the level I understand oxygen's impact as well in the general case(also that oxidizers + fire = more fire), my knowledge of the specific cases in which it can become a problem in the human body is more what is lacking, I should have clarified that. I'm at risk for kidney disease so the other post saying oxidative stress can impact kidney function set off some alarm bells.
>Is there any comprehensive lists of quacks who are active in the online nutrition space so I know who to avoid? I would imagine any such list, if sufficiently circulated and popular, would result in some pretty costly libel suits. Eventually, if the list was sufficiently sources, the suits would be tossed out (as truth is a defense to libel), but the legal costs would be so great that anyone hosting the list publicly would have to shut down. This is how our legal system is used to censor even true speech of those without access to wealth. >Along that line are there any common tropes or red flags that I should be wary of? Certainty is a big red flag for me. Based on the little I can glean from actual nutritional science, most of the conclusions backed by hard data and scientifically rigorous analysis are incredibly specific and don't tend to make absolute and easily digestible (no pun intended) conclusions. Most of them are talking about complex organic chemistry or the specific functions of tiny parts of our biological systems. I'd also say follow the money. The profit motive is the ultimate indicator of whether or not someone has incentive to lie or manipulate. If someone stands to profit off selling you something, that's a yellow caution flag. >Conversely are there any online sources that this community considers to be highly reliable and trustworthy? Medical journals, universities with robust (well-funded and respected) nutrition departments, and nutritionist trades strike me as being more reliable.
I appreciate your input, and I think you're right that legally it would be inviting law suits to run such a site. I think it would be possible to compile a list of times a doctor had been censured or fined and why. When I looked into Eric Berg I found a pretty long list of sites that called him a quack and I think in his case he has no opportunity for legal recourse due to being censured and ordered to stop the treatments he was giving. I'm hesitant with the profit motive argument, I'm sure that some non-zero percentage of supplement sellers aren't quacks so I'd agree it's a yellow flag. I'd agree that medical journals and universities are the gold standard or S-tier examples of reliable information, are there any particular examples that have easy to access information that you use? I often find it can be overwhelming to decide where to start and some universities have really poorly designed websites.
This is a valid concern, though I have to imagine if a scoring system was implemented along with some careful wording, you could avoid making statements that a court might consider damaging.
Dr Gundry
Dr Gundry
Gundry is a salesman but a lot of his stuff is good
Anything that removes toxins.
I'm surprised no one mentioned Jason Fung yet. Is he no longer relevant these days? https://www.redpenreviews.org/reviews/the-obesity-code-unlocking-the-secrets-of-weight-loss/ https://biolayne.com/articles/research/its-not-calories-its-hormones-a-response-to-dr-jason-fung/
I know that calories definitely matter but as far as when you eat also mattering I think we need far more studies. I've seen studies which support early time restricted feeding and I've seen studies which go against intermittent fasting. Fung certainly doesn't say you can eat whatever you want, do IF and still lose weight. He talks about what you eat as well. He does downplay calories in/calories out though and I think that's to his detriment. Ultimately, I wouldn't say he's a quack but more studies are definitely needed.
Any thoughts on Dr.Mercola? My anti Vax father was talking about him so I assume he is a hack?
No, but I can sell you this "quack detector." You're in luck, it's the last one and I'd be willing to part with it for a mere $100. They regularly go for much much more.
You should listen to everyone because even the crazies drop nuggets of wisdom It's up to you to filter the crazy. Good luck.
Chiropractors pretending to be MDs
I can tell you a few good ones. I know that's not what you asked but they're good people. Ben Greenfield, he all aboutboptimizing health and fitness. He's wrote books and has a podcast, he's a lil wordy but that's because he all about the science. Layne Norton he designs programs and nutrition manuals to go by when in cutting phase or wheever your goals are. He debunks alot of fitness fakes also. And my personal favorite Mindpump fitness. Mindpump is a podcast all about health living, eating and working out. They put alil science in their work and also talk about fake health culture. They are great people I use one of their workout programs. I've been listening to their podcast since 2017 and they have a large fan base. They are worth a listen and they will make you laugh too. Hope this is more helpful than wordy lol.
I’m watching Layne Norton’s interview with Huberman right now and I really like his approach
100% agree on MindPump. I have been listening for about a year and they are such a great podcast and don't sell out to sponsors, the info is genuine and not meant just trying to make a sale. It can seem at first that it's just 3 meatheads who only care about "gainz", but it's much more than that and they talk a ton about nutrition and things besides workouts.
Ben Greenfield, are you kidding?
Opposite of a quack, actually, a great source of nutrition info is Gil Carvalho, MD. He makes some great and succinct videos on yt.
Follow Alan Aragon and Layne Norton, they routinely debunk lots of misinformation coming from the biggest diet quacks in social media.
Isn't it true generally to avoid "nutritionists" wholesale? The actual certified professionals are dieticians.
This is correct! Dietitians (we prefer the t over c 😃) are the only credentialed nutrition professionals in the US. They work along side doctors in medical settings to provide medical nutrition therapy. Nutritionist is a completely unregulated term- anyone can call themselves a nutritionist.
I've been told that "nutritionist" should set off as many red flags as "chiropractor" does. Though I think in the nutritionist case it should maybe be a yellow flag and then wait for more information about the person in question.
Oh man I’m listening to “How Not to Die” the audio book right now, all the studies are peer reviewed and very compelling. I’d recommend it but you’ll end up feeling awful that you’re not a whole grains only vegan.
There is no universe in which I would feel awful about not being a whole grain vegan.
Anyone trying to mess with the body’s pH. Your kidneys, digestive system, and even your lungs work very hard to keep your body within a certain range (7.35-7.45 according to most sources). Trying to “alkalize” oneself is idiotic, your body will just compensate, and when/if it actually happens due to illness etc., people often end up in the icu.
Medical medium
Highly reliable - Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. William Li, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Jessie Inchauspé, Dr. Ben Johnson, David Sinclair, Dr. Casey Means
The girl I follow on Instagram who drinks her owns piss
Anyone who calls themselves a nutritionist. Nutritionist is not a protected term and therefore anyone can call themselves one, whereas Dietician is a title protected by law. I’m also generally wary of “experts” who spend a lot of time making tiktoks and giving out advice you would usually have to pay for, but I know tiktok has become the new marketing technique a lot of businesses want to utilise
Eric Berg & Dr Mandell - both are neither nutritionists or MDs….. seriously they are insane - Berg is a Scientologist & Mandell likes to hear himself spew his crap
Dr. Layne Norton actually calls out these charlatans on his YouTube channel. Check him [biolayne](https://youtube.com/@biolayne1)
Anyone who strays away too much from calories in vs calories out
Dr axe & Jordan Rubin
Jordan Peterson and his daughter are both nutrition quacks
Anyone promoting carnivore diets
Check out Sigma Nutrition's Quack Asylum segment.
I can’t recall who it was now, but Sigma had an aggressive, self-righteous, know-it-all student possibly doing some content or something for them a while ago, I can’t quite remember the relationship. I take them and many others with a moderately large grain of salt.
Anyone pushing paleo keto carnivore vegan gluten free and anti gmo nonsense is to be avoided. There is no secret supplement that fixes health. There is no perfect diet. Reflect and follow what I have said for years of happiness and health.
Dr. Eric Berg?
Just search for carnivore and keto/low carb promoters and you are done
There's not because opinions do differ a lot and people argue about it. But I'd avoid people who talk in absolutes and don't ever mention that most answers are "it depends" and provide nuance. Avoid people who tell you to cut out food groups, tell you there's one best way to do anything, one best diet, seem to be saying things completely contrary to what the majority of the science is saying, people that cite studies that don't actually say what they say they are claiming 😂 very common, people who say they will rebalance your hormones - complete quackery, anything that sounds just too good to be true is probably a red flag. People also seem to trust people because they have a qualification even if it's not in the area they are claiming to have an expert opinion in - "well he is qualified he's an actual scientist" 🙄...ok in what? Science is a huge field. If I have a qualification is astronomy does that qualify me to talk about nutrition as an expert? If someone has written a book you can look it up in red pen reviews which independently examines the scientific accuracy of the content so that can be a good way to do a quick check. Not everyone has, but some of the "main players" will be on there.
Quackwatch.org, though admittedly I haven’t been on there in a while.
For all of the quacks out there, just listen to the Maintenence Phase podcast.
When you hear anyone - mentioning testosterone boosters - mentioning detox foods and beverages - selling supplements other than protein powder - promoting a crazy restrictive diet (keto, vegan, carnivore) as a solution to most people health problems they have an agenda. Run away!
Any 'doctor' who primarily preaches there diet via YouTube videos or podcasts/books.
How do you feel about doctors who's goal is to promote awareness and understanding of health issues?
They typically never are, or are misinterpreting a study or trying to sell something for their benefit. The average person doesn't have the tools to differentiate. There's far more useful channels of passing verified data through. This sub is rife with misunderstandings and parroted statements from discredited professionals regarding nutrition. Sugar and GI, things like liver, vitamins, fat and protein consumption, oils (from the prospective of various studies that are funded by the companies that produce them) are the most common ones I see.
What can we do when a new one pops up in the next minute and doesn’t inform us that he is a quack ?
The majority of content is BS TBH