Hello, and welcome to the Nutrition Diva podcast. I'm your host, Monica Reinagel. And this

week, we are celebrating a pretty big milestone, 15 years of doing this show. A milestone

that I certainly didn't anticipate reaching when we launched this show back in 2008. For

one thing, I wondered whether I might run out of things to talk about after 50 or 100

episodes, but I needn't have worried. From the very beginning, this show has focused

on providing more clarity around some of the mercier areas of nutrition science, debunking

common nutrition myths, scrutinizing questionable claims, and attempting to put sensational

media coverage of nutrition research into perspective. And so far, I haven't run out

of myths, questionable claims, or sensational media coverage. It seems, therefore, fitting

to observe this anniversary by responding to a recent op-ed in the New York Times that

questioned the very legitimacy of nutrition research. So I have a rule of thumb that

if I received the same question or forwarded news story from more than three listeners

in a single day, that topic gets an episode. Well, four of you sent me this particular

article within a single hour. The article that got everyone's attention was penned by

two researchers from Harvard Medical School, so heavy hitters, and the points that they

were making weren't exactly new. Research into how foods and dietary patterns affect human

health has always been hamstrung by the challenges inherent in conducting properly controlled

experiments on living human subjects. The only way to really control a subject's diet,

not to mention the other variables that might have an impact, such as sleep, movement,

and a thousand other artifacts of our daily life, is to confine them to a laboratory setting

for the duration of the experiment. Second best, perhaps, would be to provide every single

thing they eat and drink, and then either put them on the honor system or somehow monitor

...