The importance of dietary health science popularization

The most important value of dietary health science popularization is to help ordinary people skip the pitfalls dug by health marketing and "eat back" the diseases they eat in advance - according to the "Report on Nutrition and Chronic Disease Status of Chinese Residents (2023)", reasonable dietary intervention can reduce the risk of stroke by 63% and the risk of coronary heart disease by 45%, and qualified science popularization is the only bridge to implement these professional conclusions into the three meals a day of ordinary people.

A while ago, I accompanied a nutritionist working with the community to do a free clinic. I met a 62-year-old Aunt Zhang who said that she followed a short video blogger to do "fruit and vegetable juice fasting and detoxification". She drank eight cups of unsweetened celery and cucumber juice every day for a week, and didn't touch a bite of rice and steamed buns. In the end, she felt dizzy and nauseated and couldn't stand up. She went for a check-up. Her blood potassium was so high that she almost needed dialysis, which scared the whole family. Don't tell me, this kind of thing is really not an exception. I still have private messages from several fans in my phone. Some people followed "health bloggers" and went to the hospital after eating raw loach to relieve moisture. Some people spent more than 3,000 yuan on the "alkaline water conditioning" package and suffered acid reflux. The degree of harm caused by pseudo-science is really much more serious than not knowing nutrition at all.

Interestingly, there is a lot of controversy in the nutrition circle itself, and there is no such thing as a "one-size-fits-all" diet plan. For example, the low-carbohydrate diet has been popular for several years. Many obese people with insulin resistance follow this diet, and their blood sugar stabilizes in three months, and their body fat percentage drops quickly. However, if you ask an athlete who runs three and a half marathons a week to eat like this, he will suffer from hypoglycemia and faint on the road after running two kilometers. There is also the debate about vegetarianism vs. omnivorous food that has been debated for more than ten years. For patients with severe hyperlipidemia, short-term adjustments to a pure vegetarian diet can indeed quickly lower blood lipids. However, if you let a growing child only eat vegetables and tofu every day, there is a high probability that he will suffer from iron and zinc deficiency, which will affect his development. Qualified science popularizers will never give you an immediate opinion of "such-and-such food is a magic medicine/such-and-such food is wrong to eat". They will only help you clarify the applicable boundaries of different diet plans, so that you can choose the most suitable one according to your physical condition.

A friend of mine who has been working as a clinical nutritionist for seven years said that in the past few years, she worked in the nutrition department of the hospital and received basically all patients who had been diagnosed with diabetes, gout, or even complications. Many people had to take insulin before they realized that their habit of eating plain porridge and eating pickles had actually damaged their blood sugar. In the past few years, she has taken time to do science popularization. She often receives feedback from fans in the background, saying that her physical examination revealed abnormal glucose tolerance. After adjusting her diet for three months, her indicators returned to normal, and she did not need to take medicine or suffer from the pain of quitting. You have to know that the current prevalence of hypertension among residents over 18 years old in my country is 27.5%, and the prevalence of diabetes is 11.9%. More than 60% of the incidences are directly related to an unreasonable diet high in oil, salt, and sugar. If more people can be reached through popular science, I don’t know how many people will be saved from chronic diseases.

Of course, many people complain, saying that the current diet science popularization is creating anxiety, and this is actually true - when you browse short videos, you will often see titles such as "One bite is equal to ten pounds of sugar" and "This kind of food is the main culprit of cancer". When you click on it, they either sell meal replacements or supplements, deliberately sensationalizing common dietary issues, just to cut leeks. But this is essentially marketing disguised as science popularization, which is completely different from true science popularization. Practitioners I have seen who are really doing science popularization are all helping people relieve their anxiety: they will not let you eat brown rice all the time, saying that you can eat white rice as long as you control the amount. ； It won’t let you spend hundreds of dollars to buy imported superfoods. It is said that the vitamin content of ordinary vegetables and apples is completely sufficient for daily needs. ； It won’t even let you give up milk tea hot pot completely. As long as you don’t eat it every day, indulging in it once a week will not affect your health at all.

Last week, I went to a night market barbecue with my friends. The little girl who was traveling with me was scared by the pseudo-science popularization, saying that red meat causes cancer and she didn’t even dare to touch a bite. Later, after reading the formal science popularization, she learned that as long as you don’t eat large amounts for a long time, it is perfectly fine to eat a few skewers occasionally. I was very happy to eat the skewers that day. In fact, in the final analysis, dietary science has never been about training everyone to become a nutritionist with a calculator to count calories. It just hopes that when you pick up the menu next time, you will roughly know what you are eating and what impact it will have on your body. You can eat healthily without sacrificing the pleasure of eating. This is enough.