4 Reasons why you'll never find the perfect diet.

1. Nutrition is not a perfect science. There are a lot of limitations researchers deal with when they conduct nutrition studies. Some of these challenges are:

• recruiting people who agree to participate in the study.
• getting those recruits to stick to the rules of their treatment group.
• getting people to stick around for long enough periods of time for the researchers to observe results.
• getting people to recall and record their diets with 100% accuracy.
  
  Because of these challenges, it is hard to conduct a perfect study where researchers can really trust that the results are perfect enough to apply to bigger populations. In addition, everyone in the world eats! So, when it comes to observing the effects of nutrition, it is hard for researchers to pinpoint the effects of ONE single food/nutrient/ingredient on whatever outcomes they are trying to find.

2. There is no perfect human. Even if you COULD pinpoint the effects of ONE variable, every human is different. Therefore, how one person reacts to a treatment may not be the same as how another person reacts. We have to account for many factors that might impact those reactions, such as:

• Age
• Sex
• Genetics
• Metabolism
• Health conditions
• Psychology
• and many more aspects of physiology.

Image source: People Matters Global

3. Diets vary across cultures and regions. Different parts of the world eat different types of foods. This is because there are different crops that grow, animals that may or may eat, and there are different flavors that they cook with. In addition (depending on genetics and the food cultures a person evolved from) different people will have different tolerances for different foods

Image created by Kit Stone.

HERE IS THE GOOD NEWS.
Multiple diets can work! Some people have goals to live a long life. Some people want to protect themselves from disease. Some want to use nutrition as fuel for sport. Others may want to maintain a specific physique. Each of these goals depends on a different diet. The plus side of working with a qualified nutrition professional is that they can help you meet these goals by helping you discover which diet works best for your body and goals.

So, although there is no ONE perfect diet that works for EVERYONE, there IS an eating pattern that can work well for YOU!

Sierra
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