2026
- Weekend Reading · Real Food3 min read
Weekend reading: a Stanford trialist's sensible book about food, and why we name the sensible ones
This site has a rule: we do not name the people we think are selling you complexity; we describe the pattern and let you recognize it. The rule has a corollary we use less often than we should: we do name the people getting it right.
- Follow the Money · Real Food4 min read
91% of the papers criticizing the ultra-processed-food category had an industry-tied author
On Tuesday we said to watch who makes the argument against the ultra-processed-food evidence, and who paid for the making. A systematic review in the American Journal of Public Health, described this week by the Oregon Research Institute, has done the counting.
- Real Food · Evidence5 min read
8.8 million people, 51 cohorts, one direction. And what 'associated' means in numbers you can use.
The largest pooled analysis of ultra-processed food and chronic disease to date was released today in Family Medicine and Community Health: 51 prospective cohorts, 8,819,894 adults, followed for two to thirty-two years across four continents.
- Real Food · Clinical4 min read
Texas wrote its own dietary guidelines today. Six lines, one sentence we'd keep, and a rule for medical schools.
The Texas Nutrition Advisory Committee, created by a 2025 state law, published the first Dietary Guidelines for Texans today. There are six: fill half your plate with vegetables and fruit; eat three or more servings of healthy proteins a day; include healthy fats; eat foods for…
- Real Food · Evidence5 min read
Three scientists say the trials don't prove processing itself is the problem. Here is the argument without the spin — theirs or ours.
A Perspective in Science today, by nutrition researchers at Copenhagen, Wageningen and Liverpool (DOI 10.1126/science.aef3495), reviews the five controlled feeding trials that compare ultra-processed and minimally processed diets and concludes that they provide weak support for an…
- Evidence · Real Food4 min read
A preprint says ultra-processed food raises frailty risk 43%. Here is how to read a preprint.
A paper posted today on medRxiv pools ten observational studies of ultra-processed food and frailty in older adults — 105,000 participants across the United States, Spain, Italy, Australia, Singapore, Iran and China — and reports that higher intake was associated with 43% higher odds of frailty.
- Real Food4 min read
'Eat real food' is now a federal slogan. The sentence is right. The test is what follows it.
Last night in Austin the Secretary of Health and Human Services headlined an "Eat Real Food" rally of more than 600 people, and this morning served broccoli to third-graders at an elementary school on a tour promoting the new Dietary Guidelines.
- Follow the Money · Real Food4 min read
How a diet becomes a subscription: a sovereign fund buys into the five-day fast
L-Nutra, the Los Angeles company behind ProLon — a five-day kit of soups, bars and drink mixes designed to mimic a fast — announced today a $36.5 million investment led by Mubadala, Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, bringing its Series D to $83.5 million.
- Evidence · The Fundamentals5 min read
Two papers in a week priced the fundamentals in years. Here is the receipt.
Two large studies from a University of Sydney team landed this week, and together they are the closest thing we have to a price list for the fundamentals.
- Real Food5 min read
The new Dietary Guidelines say 'eat real food.' Here is what is in the ten pages, and what isn't.
The Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture released the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans today. The document is ten pages long; the previous edition ran 164.
2025
- Evidence · Connection4 min read
The Blue Zones researchers answered. Here is what the reply settles, and what it can't.
Fifteen months ago we wrote about the Ig Nobel Prize awarded to a demographer whose work argues that many of the world's claimed oldest people are the product of missing birth certificates and pension fraud, and that the Blue Zones might be artifacts of bad records.
- Real Food · Follow the Money4 min read
Everything has protein in it now. The thing being sold is the word.
Protein ice cream. Protein soda. Protein water. Protein pancakes, chips, popcorn, candy. Semafor reports today that sales of products marketed as protein-rich rose 4.8% year over year through March, and that the food industry is reformulating whole aisles around a single nutrient.
- Real Food · Clinical4 min read
Doctors get about 19 hours of nutrition training. Patients get podcasts.
The Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education asked medical schools today to strengthen nutrition education across pre-med, medical school and residency, and to report their commitments within two weeks.
- Real Food · Evidence4 min read
The American Heart Association drew the line on ultra-processed food. Here is where it is.
The American Heart Association published a science advisory today in Circulation on ultra-processed foods — industrial formulations built from refined ingredients and additives, the category the Nova classification calls group four.
- Real Food · Evidence4 min read
Fasting beat calorie counting by 2.9 kilograms. Look at what both groups actually did.
A randomized trial published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine will be reported as a win for intermittent fasting, and in a narrow sense it is.
- Real Food · Evidence4 min read
The FDA banned a red dye today. The reason is in the fine print.
The FDA announced today that it is revoking the authorization for FD&C Red No. 3 in food and ingested drugs. The dye is the bright cherry red in candy, frosting, maraschino cherries and some medicines.
- Real Food · Evidence5 min read
Two reports, seventeen days apart, two answers on alcohol. Both are right.
The US Surgeon General issued an advisory today calling alcohol a leading preventable cause of cancer — about 100,000 cases and 20,000 deaths a year in the United States, across at least seven cancer types — and asked Congress to put a cancer warning on the label.