An Argument Against Nutrition Agnosticism
Ancestral Diet Apologetics
As coaches and practitioners, we tend to see nutrition through various different lenses. But not so different as to deny the science of nutrition.
One of the ideals taken up, especially in the evidence-based space is this conception of nutrition agnosticism.
Nutrition agnosticism simply means being indifferent to people’s dietary choices. In addition to indifference, one needs to understand individual variance when it comes to diet. This means many people can thrive off one particular diet over another.
For example, if a person thrives off of a low-carb diet while another can thrive off of a high-carb diet. A nutritional agnostic would see both approaches as viable depending on the person we are talking about.
However, from a population perspective nutritional agnosticism may be inappropriate and can even perpetuate harm.
Dietary Guidelines
The USA and other countries have a set of guidelines for what constitutes a health-promoting diet.
It is clear a diet high in fruits, vegetables, lean sources of protein, polyunsaturated fat, and whole grains is favorable for numerous health outcomes.
As well as being low in refined carbohydrates, alcohol, added sugar, saturated fat, and sodium.
You’ll find little if any data refuting the benefit of this dietary pattern on a population and even experimental level.
In fact, following a diet similar to the 2020 USA dietary guidelines is associated with decreased risk of chronic disease across the board.
So, why would we advocate against a diet like this except in cases of medical necessity?
The Detriment of Anecdote
People online often base their choices for diet or health practices based on personal experience or the personal experiences of others.
While personal experience or anecdote can have its place in the discussion of health it is often overused and overvalued.
Here are three main arguments against the reliance on anecdotes for health decisions:
Human beings are fallible.
Anecdotes are not systematic.
Relying on anecdotes is fallacious.
Argument #1: People’s ability to perceive, understand, and interpret the world accurately is hindered by many different factors. These factors include biases, heuristics, distortions, and other faults in human reasoning and understanding.
How do we know that diet itself caused this person to feel better and not the other behaviors they adopted? What if a person is leaving out key details like they’re on steroids? Maybe the effect the person is feeling is placebo, how could they tell the difference?
Argument #2: Due to the fallibility of humans it is impossible to compare anecdotes head to head. There are often conflicting anecdotes out there. How can we tell which one is more accurate than the other?
This might require us to test one intervention, diet, or program to another or nothing, but at that point, we are venturing into systematic scientific investigation, not anecdote. This is why anecdotes are arbitrary, anyone can claim anything, but unless it is tested in a systematically controlled fashion it is impossible to establish any causative connections or associations.
Argument #3: The bedrock of reasoning from anecdotes is fallacious. If we are arguing a causative relationship between two variables from an anecdote we are committing the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. This translates to “after this, therefore because of this”.
The fallacy takes on the following form:
X happened before Y
Therefore, X caused Y
For example, I went on a low-carb diet and started to feel better, therefore, a low-carb diet is better. But this causative relationship cannot be established merely because two events happened around the same time. It could be the case you adopted exercise, you lost weight, or you’re eating better quality foods not the low-carb diet per se.
All this to say we cannot rely on anecdotes for deciding the best dietary approach let alone be ‘agnostic’ about certain dietary approaches.
Ancestral Diet Apologetics
Nutritional agnosticism can quickly turn into a form of apologetics for the ‘ancestral’ health space which includes low-carb/paleo/carnivore style diets.
If the basis of evidence for an approach is anecdote, then of course it would be appropriate to leave people alone if they subjectively feel better.
However, if a dietary pattern, such as the carnivore diet, is actively against the dietary guidelines by telling people to consume higher amounts of saturated fat and sodium… it can be deemed harmful from a nutritional science perspective.
We know high intake of saturated fat increases the risk of CVD, high sodium intake increases the risk of hypertension, and LDL cholesterol is a causative risk factor for atherosclerosis.
So, for a dietary pattern to deny these facts is actively harmful to not only individual health but the health of a population.
Therefore, it is imperative to uphold dietary patterns which show strong evidence of being health-promoting while denouncing dietary patterns which has no evidence or are downright harmful to health.
We cannot simply leave this up to personal preference or choice, the be agnostic about that choice for others. The harm clearly outweighs the benefit.