Opinion | The crisis of the dinner plate

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Our dinner tables have become a battlefield, thanks to U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Earlier this month, he abruptly upended the food pyramid, elevating meat and dairy to the top.

This reversal of decades of scientific consensus — which has increasingly prioritized plant-based proteins — has left the public with a whiplash-inducing question: In a world of conflicting headlines, what are we supposed to believe?

The answer is not found in a new pyramid, but in understanding why our nutritional guidance has become such a maze of misinformation. We are currently witnessing an erosion of public trust driven by the field’s inherent complexity and a communication gap.

To understand why dietary advice shifts, one must first appreciate that recommendations about what to eat are not the same as prescribing a pill to treat an ailment. Unlike a single drug with a specific mechanism, nutritional science investigates the lifetime intake of nutrients across varied diets.

This reality has led to the concept of the “food matrix.”

The tools of the trade compound the challenge. Much of our knowledge comes from observational research, which identifies correlations rather than causes and effects. While randomized controlled trials are the gold standard, they are prohibitively expensive and often ethically impossible — one cannot randomly assign a group of people to a lifetime of a suspected unhealthy diet.

When one considers that many researchers have consulted for the food industry, one might understand consumer skepticism. Furthermore, negative findings are generally difficult to publish, leading to an overrepresentation of “positive” results and an unbalanced view of the “truth.”

Some technical advances are aiding our understanding of what might constitute a healthy diet.

The use of metabolic biomarkers and wearable sensors holds promise for more precise quantification of dietary intake. Stronger study designs and new guidelines for industry-funded research are slowly increasing the rigor and trustworthiness of the data.

However, with diet-related noncommunicable diseases projected to account for almost 70% of global mortality by 2030, we cannot wait for perfect data. Achieving clarity is not about finding a single, definitive answer; it is about fostering a public understanding that nutrition science is a constantly evolving body of knowledge.