Think Global Health | October 3, 2023
Read the PublicationJournalist Michael Pollan famously wrote that all diet advice can be summarized in three simple sentences: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Yet, since the 1970s, attempts to curb diet-related diseases have focused on a shifting array of culprits: saturated fats, trans fats, refined carbs, added sugar, sodium, and so on. Despite massive resources devoted to research on the role of nutrients in our metabolism, and the adoption of some effective diet-related policies, we are still far from fixing the problem: the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that unhealthy diets are responsible for eight million deaths a year.