The lack of nuance in some of nutrition twitter is frustrating (evergreen tweet yeah).

Some say that eating 'real food' is the answer to reduce COVID risks immediately. Some say it is key to reduce disease for future pandemics. Some say it doesn't matter.

I understand why people want 2 help others adopt a healthier lifestyle to COVID risk. We all want to do something. But if you acknowledge that obesity & associated chronic disease is highly heritable, an outcome stemming from complex socioeconomic/psychosocial/behavioral

and more factors, telling people to just eat 'real food' or avoid donuts is just like telling them to 'eat less and move more'- advice that puts all onus on individual responsibility that we know isn't successful. Which, during a pandemic, for most is even more of a burden.

There is no good evidence that this will work at scale without intensive intervention. And we certainly do not have (to my interpretation) any good evidence that changing your diet acutely will reduce morbidity and mortality from a virus. Yes, this matters.

Further, to state the obvious, food is much more than its components, we eat for much more than nutrition. For all the uncertainty about causal relationships in nutrition science, there is definitely not evidence that we need to exclude certain foods completely to be healthy.

If people want to use this time to make lifestyle changes, learn new skills, then great, let's support them. But hoping for a massive positive cultural shift in healthy behaviors during a pandemic is a pipe dream.

Should we argue for larger, long-term structural changes to reduce socioeconomic disparities to make healthier lifestyles widely available? I'd say yes! But this is a much harder discussion, and not achieved by rallying an audience to reject authority for a personal diet.

Anyway that's my probably naive view that I'll likely regret voicing in about an hour. (Also evergreen tweet)