Diet Studies, Decoded

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/opinion/diet-studies-decoded.html

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First, guns. There are several promising ways to reduce gun deaths in the United States, as Nick Kristof has explained. Arming the nation’s teachers is, of course, not one of them.

As the civil-rights activist Michael Skolnik tweeted yesterday:

Food confusion. The scientific research on what constitutes a healthy diet can sure seem confusing. One study says that one thing is good for you. A few years later, another study says that the same thing is bad for you — or doesn’t matter.

The latest research seems to add to the confusion. Experts have long emphasized the importance of how many calories a person eats — either to stay healthy or lose weight. By contrast, a new study found that “the key to weight loss is diet quality, not quantity,” as The Times headline put it.

But don’t despair. The evidence on healthy eating is actually quite consistent. It’s not very complicated, either.

Study after study — as well as common sense — suggests that most people should eat a varied diet, heavy on vegetables, fruits, whole grains and proteins. They should minimize the amount of processed food and added sugars. Most Americans would benefit by cutting back on sugars and junk food.

If you follow this advice, you don’t need to worry so much about the amount you eat, because it’s difficult to overeat most natural foods. When you’re eating, say, a salad, fish, whole-grain garlic bread and an apple, you’ll tend to stop eating when you’ve consumed a healthy number of calories. You will be full. When you’re eating, say, fried chicken and ice cream, you won’t naturally stop (unless you have a lot more self-control than I do).

There is no need to follow every twist and turn in food research, as if the expert consensus were frequently changing. It’s not. Focus on the big picture, which is quite clear. The real issue for most people isn’t figuring out what to do. It’s figuring out how to do it.

Related: My column on one approach to eating less sugar. I’ll have more to say about eating habits in an upcoming column.

One citizen, one vote. Voting rights have been a recent theme of this newsletter, and the political scientist Daniel Nichanian has a good Op-Ed on the subject today. He writes: “New Jersey, a state that trails most of its neighbors in terms of ensuring that all of its citizens have the right to vote, now has the opportunity to carry out such an unapologetic agenda of voting rights restoration.”

Podcast recommendation. “I feel like I’m still writing to let my 10-year-old self know it’s O.K. to be you. It’s O.K. to be a chubby androgynous weirdo,” The Times’s Jenna Wortham says, on The Longform Podcast. “You know what I mean? Like this weird black kid. It’s okay. There are others like you.”