A recent article in the Journal of Nutrition Reviews raises the issue of how focusing on single ingredients or nutrients within food in relation to health both misleads us and at times even results in harm.
The authors propose the concept of “food synergy” by which they mean “a perspective that more information can be obtained by looking at foods than at single food components”. They point out for example that measuring the amounts of a single nutrient – for example a vitamin, or a mineral, or an energy supply like fat or carbohydrate – frequently (I think they may even mean usually) significantly underestimates the levels that have biological effects on human beings which are available from actual food, due to synergistic effects of a variety of components within a foodstuff.
They take an example of the dietary connections with heart disease and cite several pieces of research which show that considering only the fat content in a diet to lower cholesterol levels in blood and so reduce the chances of heart disease is actually pretty inadequate. In fact, they even cite studies which show that certain other food factors in the diet may be even more important than lipids. For example, diets rich in unrefined plant foods such as whole grains, dark green and yellow or orange fleshed fruits and vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds etc can lower blood cholesterol “comparably to statins”. Wow! What does that mean?
Well, before I draw any conclusions let me say one further thing from this paper – they show that what is most important is not the levels of single nutrients or components of food, but that the way components interact within a food is more significant. But more than that, they show that food patterns within a diet are also very important.
So here’s the conclusion. You can’t consider the impact of diet on food by measuring components and classifying some as good, some as bad, and defining optimal levels of them. No. What you have to do is consider the diet as a whole. And that’s much harder for scientists – because scientists have become dependant on “randomised controlled trials” and they can do those with single components of single foods but its much much more difficult to do that with the complexity of whole diets.
But, just cos its difficult for scientists to use their traditional componential methods, doesn’t mean we can’t develop emergent ones instead!
Look at the example of the relation between diet and heart disease again. There are two standout features there. Unrefined foods. And colourful foods. The more your diet contains refined foods, the worse it is. The more your diet contains brown or beige foods, the worse it is. (And, hey, no cheating – no artificial colourants allowed!!)
Heroes Not Zombies 
Where possible, that should be indeed advocated. I guess the problem is getting people to liven up their diets when pills are so readily available, and a good number seem to work. It’s just that the satisfaction of obtaining the benefit naturally is lost.
It’s got so bad people consider breakfast in one bar.
I don’t buy the cholesterol hypothesis as it keeps changing and doesn’t make much sense. People with low cholesterol develop heart problems just as much and even the biggest selling drug in the world has small print that statins are not shown to prevent heart problems. The drugs are effective mostly, but a better angle is needed on this conundrum.
Some nutrionists advocate that supplements are essential to a a healthful diet because they claim that the typical western diet can not supply sufficient nutrients.
It is interesting to see that even in vitro, some forms of foods have a greater impact than single nutrients, see, e.g., Vitamin C Or the Whole Fruit and Nothing but the Fruit.
Thanks for that link. I’m no fan of supplements – partly because I can’t swallow a pill to save myself! Food, however, presents me with no such problems! 🙂
[…] part book, he attacks the dominance of “experts” who promote a reductionist idea of nutrition based on components which are not foods; the Western diet with its imbalances and overload of processed foods; and sums […]