Forbidden Food: How Science Says You Can Eat What You Like and Like What You Eat

John Sloan

Publish Green (2014)

Today, nearly everybody believes the benefits of healthy eating are as sure a thing as tomorrow morning. This idea has had a devastating impact in the world since it first appeared almost 100 years ago. But in the past 30, and particularly the past 10 years, it's as if a shock wave of health-related food preference and consumption has hit the $3.2-trillion worldwide food industry. The dollar and human cost of the changes in choice and value of primary products, processing and production, product development and marketing, and retail presentation are almost incalculable.

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Already in the 1970s, food manufacturers were responding to consumer demand by producing coarsely "healthy" foods: whole-grain cookies, low-fat ice cream, sugar-free candies and gum, and high-fibre cereals. But lately, the demand that food also taste good while still being "healthy" has led to it being filled with gum instead of fat, bacteria ("live cultures"), soluble corn fibre, polydextrose, stabilizers to replace the mouth feel of wheat protein, açai fruit, and even water and air (the miracle calorie-reducing ingredients in chocolate). This is all alleged and generally taken to be in line with scientific proof of real health benefit.

The money food suppliers make from selling their products now depends heavily on what you and I believe about its impact on health. Gazing enviously at the drug industry's profits, the food industry has shifted from telling us about ingredients to making "wellness" claims: keeping skin young, avoiding heart disease, and improving infant development. The world's leading food producer, Nestlé, has re-imaged itself from a mere maker of chocolate and cereals to providing "functional" foods. These look more and more like medicines. And there is a strong business case for Nestlé to expect its profits for these products to be much better than those for old-fashioned food.

All this is based on claims that what you eat will make a difference to your health. We accept these claims because we believe they are scientific. But what is the quality of the science those claims are based on? Is it in the same league as the scientific information that would pass as evidence for other potentially wonderful, or dangerous, things like taking medication or having surgery?

The surprising answer is that the reliable benefit of diet's effect on health outcomes is very close to zero, as I reveal in the next few chapters. Why do we swallow healthy eating so easily? I think our credulousness comes from who and what we are and how important food and nutrition have always been to our survival, with the result that we are hard-wired into accepting "good versus bad" beliefs about food.

Intangible satisfactions

As a doctor, I am a scientist, but one of my motives in writing this book conflicts in a way with that. I think the scientific view of the world is wonderful, but limited. It just isn't much good at understanding a lot of what really matters to us: how we feel, what we love, and what guides the direction of our culture and civilization. Intangibles, but also very unusual things. And unlike many other people who call themselves scientists, I believe intangibles exist and think they are important.

This limitation of science to things that can be perceived and measured is quite different from the scientific limitations I discuss in most of this book. It's one thing to draw wrong conclusions from apparently scientific information about things science was never meant to deal with: things that are complicated or unique, or creatures of the imagination. It's another to make mistakes because of bad or misinterpreted science. I think that diet science is bad and misunderstood science, but also that it's poking around where science's methods simply lack traction -- a bit like taking apart and cataloguing in the tiniest detail the wood, steel, strings and mechanism of a piano in trying to understand why you are thrilled to tears when you hear it beautifully played.

If diet science is unconvincing science, as I believe it is, then healthy dieting doesn't make sense. But presume I'm wrong. Biased, inexpert, something of a crank, and no good at arithmetic, and that eating certain foods really would make some difference to your health and length of life. Science in general still doesn't explain (or even try to) what eating should feel like, or anything else about the cultural or aesthetic side of food. You might well choose to eat "unhealthy" just to achieve some intangible satisfaction, even if it meant not living quite as long.

Belief in science's principle that everything meaningful can be explained by our current understanding of physical rules beguiles us into a simplistic, constricted grasp of life and of ourselves. This difficulty with scientific healthy eating wouldn't go away even if healthy-eating science were good science. Which it isn't.

One of the "conflicts" I admitted to in the preface is that I believe there has to be a good reason for me to change the way I decide to live. To live, I mean, in a way that doesn't suit me. I call this the onus issue. I think it's only logical that someone proposing a change in someone else's behaviour should advance good reasons. Why else would anyone do something they don't want to? Why abandon a beautiful thing you love in favour of something hideous and hated unless someone provides inescapable reasons?

This book describes why we believe in what is presented as "scientific," how we got to misunderstand the terrible significance of eating, and how ideas (once they get rolling) reinforce themselves. It examines where we've gone wrong in thinking about diet, and suggests a way back to being reasonable about it. If you accept my idea that the benefits of healthy eating don't amount to what most people believe today, I think your life may change wonderfully. But you won't find in this book new or reinterpreted rules about what to eat and not to eat.

Instead, I will try to convince you that widely accepted rules about food and health are false down to their roots, and that by getting rid of them you can enjoy a more satisfying, creative, individual and joyous experience of one of the best things life has to offer: food.

Excerpted with permission from Forbidden Food: How Science Says You Can Eat What You Like and Like What You Eat.