Hello.
The Anti-Nutritionist is not a happy bunny. In fact he isn’t a bunny at all, and has a particular problem with the fashionable belief that humans should eat rabbit food. Because this would be good for the planet, you know. I’ll say more about this later; for now, I’ll simply say that I have a problem with Nutritionists in general, and this here blog exists to poke fun at them.
Perhaps once a week, I will pick my favourite Nutritionist to mock, or a government institution, or an NGO, or a corporation. There is a purpose to this – apart from my possibly pathological need to mock people – and it is this. Nutritionism (I should thank Ben Goldacre for coining this term) is not just a harmless conceit, and a certificate in nutrition is not just a consolation prize for people who can’t get a proper degree. The latter is a license to bamboozle, and people who hold such licenses have caused harm, misery, death and economic ruin on a vast scale. Just as an army marches on its stomach, so does a country thrive or fall on what its people are eating, and when they’re told to eat rubbish by experts, bad things happen. Very bad things indeed.
Rational debate doesn’t work in these scenarios, because the underpinning of Nutritionism is not fact but ideology. Nutritionism is a religion, and I’m here today to tell you about hellfire and damnation. These are my theses, and I will be nailing them to the church door, one by one, over the coming months. If nothing else, you might find them entertaining.