On today’s episode, I talked to Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall about their new book, Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us. To give you a sense of what we talked about, here’s a bit from the book’s introduction; it grabbed me right from the beginning.
The wellness industry … an invention of the twentieth century, rose alongside the growing rates of chronic disease, with annual global markets above $6 trillion as of 2023. Influencers and gurus peddled supplements, diets and diet books, exercise equipment, and cleanses. They stoked the “diet wars,” fights about which foods or nutrients are most responsible for our health problems. They sold the idea that the problem is us: that we can control what we eat and how healthy we become. That we must do better.
… Instead of helping, the diet industries, and their debates, distracted us and obscured important truths about food. They put the focus on questions like: What’s the best diet? or How canI lose weight? Those questions miss the point. Instead, we should ask: Why do we eat what we eat? A shared obsession with that question prompted us—a scientist and a journalist—to write this book.
Both the scientist and the journalist joined us today.
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