Why? Human nutrition is largely confused science. Industry takes advantage to make billions in profit with snake oils.

I am this close before calling it pseudo-science but I think it's just the biological complexity that gets lost among nutritionists. We know so little that we shouldn't hand out advice at all apart from 'don't drink battery fluid'. It's hyper confusing:

Salt bad, salt good [1]. Coconut oil holy, coconut oil devil [2]. Fat is evil, fat is saviour from the grandmaster of hell 'sugar' so it's good again. Take your vitamins but actually don't because compound vitamins increase mortality [2] but it actually doesn't matter since uptake is shit anyway. Eat Goji berries because that's what George Washington did to become POTUS (according to that companies marketing). Just kidding, he merely ate bread which is bad for you and just like stopping oat from taking over we need to sell you actual milk for your bone health that also kills you because antibiotics and cholesterol which, newsflash, has no links to heart disease [4]. Etc etc etc............

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/aug/09/salt-not-as-...

[2] https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/coconut-oil

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23255568/

[4] https://www.nhs.uk/news/heart-and-lungs/study-says-theres-no...

Note that the post you replied to recommended a registered dietician, and yet your post seems directed at nutritionists. The distinction is important because the former group is generally much better educated than the latter.

Not sure about the USA, but in Canada the requirements to become a registered dietician include a B. Sc. and writing a standard exam, whereas there are no requirements to call yourself a nutritionist.

You are correct but OP is pointing to generally recommended controversies, backed by FDA and other agencies by 'research', running for decades. I wouldn't bet much on somebody holding a title being automatically correct.

If we as mankind don't know these super-complex effects that can take half a lifetime to manifest, no amount of titles will get you closer to truth.

I said nutritionists but should have said 'nutrition science'. Thanks for pointing it out.

That varies heavily from state to state. It's anywhere from no regulations (e.g., New Jersey) all the way to only licensed dieticians may provide individualized nutritional counseling at all (e.g., Georgia). In general, states lean towards the latter.

I think calling nutrition is a pseudoscience is a huge disservice. It’s a rapidly growing science in its nascency. Older research suffers greatly from “correlation is not causation”. That’s the reason that ideas like “saturated fat is bad” are getting debunked now.

I am of the opinion that most every educated person with enough interest in nutrition is best off doing their own research and forming their own opinions that are backed up by scientific research. This is a great place to start: https://examine.com/

That's why I said "I am this close to actually calling it pseudo-science". You make a good point and I agree. But I think it's way way way too early in nutrition to treat it with the confidence that we do. We just don't know much of anything yet, really. It's VERY complex.

There is certainly an element of legitimate scientific inquiry. That is drowned out by the volume of people using medical credentials to enrich themselves with half truths.

I am of the opinion that most every educated person with an interest in nutrition should ignore the questionable scientific research and focus on what empirically produces good results. Look at masters athletes who are still healthy and competing at a high level into their 60s. What do they eat? You can't go too far wrong by copying their diets.

This is just so wrong. Pro athletes can get away with so much, because they exercise. An average sedentary person will not have the same allowances.

Most pro athletes get fat and sick once they retire, because old food habits stay.

I had a friend who was in a soccer team for the uni. He was a really good and dedicated athlete. He ate a bucket of KFC and 1.5L of Coke (sugar version) almost every day. He was shredded with six pack abs. Because he had 2x training sessions per day.

Needless to say, now he’s 30-something with a belly. Your average couch potato looking person.

nradov suggested to look at athletes who were still fit at 60, not your friend with a belly at 35.

Somebody said that retired pro linemen tend to be slim, because they got really tired of having to carry 300+ pounds, and that retired pro wide receivers are the ones that run to fat, now that they don't have to stay fit for speed and agility.

There are university nutrition courses, but I hear you. I worked in the bodybuilding supplement industry for 3 years and I'm not even sure what's right or wrong anymore, there was so much psuedoscience going on mixed in with the real science. It is so easy to fake "real looking" science that it is no wonder your average Joe falls for it.

use examine.com or search for scientific literature yourself to sort through the mess.

Also to be honest most doctors deal with what is wrong with you or really wrong with you.

This isn't because they don't care, it's just not where their daily attention is.

this post deserves a large, large, helping of down votes. there is easily available evidence based approaches to necessary micronutrients/supplements needed to maintain a variety of different health standards and keep illnesses at bay. denying that in a huff is pure ignorance. Check out Dr. Rhonda on youtube or Dr. Peter Attia's podcast the drive (not nutrition specific, but covered in depth at times).

> Check out Dr. Rhonda on youtube

That's basically the embodiment of what is wrong with the field. Saying that nutrition science is at most in its infancy and we shouldn't derive any actions from the tiny amount of well understood information that there is ('eat something digestible with a little variety and don't drink sea water', everything else is also common sense or basically speculation).

Would studying nutrition be a good use of medical students' time? Within an evidence-based medicine framework, hardly any nutritional studies qualify as "high" quality. Much of it is barely a step above junk with multiple uncontrolled variables. And in fairness to nutrition researchers, limits imposed by funding and ethics make meaningful large-scale human studies very difficult.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_of_evidence

In terms of human nutrition we know how to prevent acute diseases caused by deficiencies like kwashiorkor, beriberi, scurvy, Rickets, etc. And we know that excess consumption causes weight gain. Beyond those basics we should treat most nutritional claims with skepticism, regardless of whether they come from a physician, dietician, or nutritionist.

I think it very much would be, yes.

If relevant policy-makers want to speak to me privately I'd be happy to but I had an instance of symptoms that 8+ well-recognized doctors at Stanford were unable to diagnose for a half a year, but a dietician that spoke to me was able to give me an answer to in about 10 minutes that seemed to solve my problem over a period of a few weeks after I started followed their advice.

The whole medicine study is a joke since it focuses on symptom treatment and not treatment of the cause(s) of the symptoms. Functional Medicine is the science that tries to find the causes and treat those but less than 1% of medical doctors practice functional medicine.

> whole medicine study is a joke since it focuses on symptom treatment and not treatment of the cause(s)

This is bunk. Antibiotics, chemotherapy and gene therapy are three treatments, off the top of my head, that are proven to treat causes and not symptoms.

Functional Medicine, on the other hand, has a history of being fined for false marketing [1]. I would be shocked if an entire percent of medical practitioners would touch it.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_medicine

Also remember: What do you call a person who graduated in the bottom half of their medical class? Doctor.

That applies to the bottom of the class too.

C's get degrees, etc, etc.

It's dangerous, because it can come off as 'anti-science' but this is why I'm skeptical of many experts.

Just think about how many shitty engineers you know.

I know dozens of devs who I wouldn't let push to prod (not just because pushing to prod is bad), and they make 6-figures. There must be correspondingly bad doctors

> I know dozens of devs who I wouldn't let push to prod

Yes and some of them graduated in the upper half of the class.

> There must be correspondingly bad doctors

Things that you don't get taught, wisdom, humility, engagement, and for want of a better word diagnostics.

Better a wise humble dummy who cares than a foolish smart person who doesn't.

Yeah, I probably botched the exact wording - "at the bottom" would have been stronger. It's been a very long time since I've heard that one.

I once worked with a guy who had gotten his MD in a different country. Didn't have any luck getting work when he moved back to the US, and I can understand why - I wouldn't trust him to cut my toenail based on his competence in his new profession.

> Just think about how many shitty engineers you know.

None? Passing the PE exam is no joke. An engineering degree only counts as four years (half) of the experience required to take the test.

Maybe software devs should have something similar? Then when someone calls themself an engineer (or your own word, don't use ours) you know they meet a minimum level of competency and experience.

That's a great thought terminating cliche, but they've still managed to cross several other filters, like just getting into medical school and then grinding out across several years, internships, attending, etc.

I got straight A's in my IT and CS classes, but DGAF about English and History. My overall GPA wasn't impressive... but I still got into VA Tech. Am I a bad programmer?

Also—I just found this out a month ago—a "nutritionist" is not the same thing as a dietitian, which is licensed. I had assumed these were one and the same.

"Dietitian is like dentist while nutritionist is like tootheologist." --Dara Ó Briain