Myth Diagnosis: Is Nutrition Just About Avoiding Deficiencies?

In today’s installment of Myth Diagnosis:
Myth: “Nutrition is simply about avoiding vitamin deficiencies.”
Truth: The discovery of vitamins transformed medicine and saved millions from diseases like pellagra, scurvy, and beriberi. But it also launched a reductionist approach to nutrition-judging foods by isolated nutrients rather than by their full, robust biological effects.

That framework worked for deficiency diseases, but not for the chronic diseases that plague us today like obesity, diabetes, and my own specialty heart disease.

Diagnosis: Tunnel vision of food story.

Prescription: Move beyond nutrient arithmetic. Evaluate foods by now they affect metabolism, inflammation, the microbiome, and long-term health.