Dietary fibre🌾, UPFs🧁, food policy📜, nutrition RCTs👩‍⚕️, & misinformation🫢 – 25 nutrition learnings at the end of 2025

I always have my nose in new health research, so I’m sharing some of the most relevant studies and news with you.

In the past couple of weeks I attended five online nutrition and food webinars hosted by experts. They covered the latest information about dietary fibre, ultra-processed foods (UPFs), food policy, nutrition randomized control trials (RCTs), and misinformation. I pulled out my top 5 takeaways from each of the five sessions, hence 25 nutrition learnings.

1 – Canadian Nutrition Society (CNS) webinar on fibre

Joanne Slavin & Anissa Armet – “Dietary fibre is a cornerstone in chronic disease prevention: insights for healthcare professionals”

This webinar summarized the current science about dietary fibre including its health effects, types of fibre, and challenges to get more people to eat more fibre for their health.

Leesa’s top 5 takeaways from this webinar:

1. Dietary fibre helps to lower blood glucose, cholesterol, blood pressure, and energy intake; and helps to increase frequency of bowel movements and mineral absorption.
2. Most people only get about 1/2 of the recommended intake of dietary fibre, so there is a lot of room for improvement.
3. Contrary to popular belief, not all soluble dietary fibre lowers blood lipids and not all insoluble fibre improves laxation. This is because there’s more to fibre than just its solubility, such as its fermentability, viscosity, etc. which also contribute to its beneficial health effects.
4. A standard serving of most fruits and vegetables contains 1-3 g of fibre. Fibre is often added to foods like cereals to increase the fibre content up to 13 g per serving.
5. There are several challenges in adding functional fibre to many foods and beverages due to its lack of solubility, low palatability, cost, etc.

In other words, according to Joanne Slavin and Anissa Armet, according to this webinar most people should be increasing the amount of dietary fibre they consume to help improve their health.

For more information, here’s a link to watch the webinar for yourself (for a small fee):

• https://cns-scn.ca/education-portal/view/dietary-fiber-is-a-cornerstone-in-chronic-disease-prevention-insights-for-healthcare-professionals

2 – True Health Initiative (THI) 2nd Annual Health Misinformation Symposium session on the food environment

Julia Belluz – “Biscuits, Blood Sugar, and the Big Picture: How diet fads distort nutrition and what to do about it”

In this session Julia Belluz showed evidence that the issue with obesity rising over the past few decades is due to the changing food environment and easy, inexpensive access to an abundance of ultra-processed foods (it’s not due to people’s lack of willpower).

Leesa’s top 5 takeaways from this Health Misinformation Symposium session:

1. There’s been an enormous increase in obesity in the US since the mid-to-late 1970s.
2. People blame themselves and feel that they need to “will” their way out of obesity, however over the past few decades when obesity increased, people have successfully “willed” themselves into other health improvements such as reducing alcohol use, driving with seatbelts, etc. So, the issue with obesity isn’t a personal failure of willpower, but more likely a result of how the food environment has changed.
3. Food environment = How we live with food, including the physical, cultural, social, economic, and policy that influence what and how much we eat.
4. Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) cause increased intake and weight gain. (Leesa’s thought: I shared Dr. Hall’s metabolic RTC demonstrating the increased intake when eating UPFs here.) UPFs include foods that are industrially processed and are high in salt, sugar, and fat. UPFs are also hyperpalatable and energy dense, and are created for the purpose of preserving food and maximizing sales. By definition, these are not foods that someone can create in their own kitchen. NOVA has a 4-group classification system (1 – un/minimally processed, 2 – processed culinary ingredients, 3 – processed food, 3 – ultra-processed foods and drinks) that you can see here.
5. Julia’s proposed solution to addressing the rise in obesity includes building a healthier food environment via local and national policy (as they do in France, for example). In the meantime, when counselling clients regarding weight goals, clinicians and health pros should address them without causing any shame and should approach with radical empathy.

In other words, according to Julia Belluz, obesity is the result of a food environment that makes UPFs delicious, widely available, inexpensive, and abundant. People struggling with obesity should be supported in choosing, preparing, and cooking more nutritious, less energy dense, less processed foods, while we work toward getting more nutritious and minimally-processed foods to be more widely available, inexpensive, and abundant.

It looks like THI has posted recordings of symposium sessions at the link below, plus here’s a link to Julia’s website:

• https://truehealthinitiative.org/
• https://www.juliabelluz.com/

3 – True Health Initiative (THI) 2nd Annual Health Misinformation Symposium session on food policy

Marion Nestle – “How industry (mis)influence shapes dietary choices”

In this session Professor Emeritus Marion Nestle discussed a lot of US food policy that doesn’t apply to Canada, although some of it does. She also discusses the industry influence on food policy (which is much less now in Canada than it was before—one example is Canada’s Food Guide update in 2019 that did not allow industry lobby and ended up consolidated the meat/alternate and dairy groups into one group called “protein”).

Leesa’s top 5 takeaways from this Health Misinformation Symposium session:

1. The misinformation about the health effects of tobacco were easier to counter than food industry misinformation because tobacco is “one product, one message.”  The tobacco and food industry playbooks are the same, but nutrition misinformation is much more complicated because people must eat (not a choice, like tobacco) and a person’s diet is composed of many different foods (not one, like tobacco). The misinformation playbook includes blaming personal responsibility, urging self-regulation, funding “friendly” science while attacking independent science, creating front groups, and lobbying.
2. When it comes to spinning study results, scientists can have differing biases (some may be more for one diet or another and they may disagree on details), but industry has one single bias: to always favour their products, regardless of the details. Industry puts corporate profit over public health. Industry presents their case to the public as “educating” about the “benefits” of their products, focusing on flaws of the NOVA processed food classification system (linked above), and recommending that people “do their own research,” rather than advising people to speak with knowledgeable professionals or experts who understand the science.
3. Sometimes industry puts a positive spin on study results, even if those study results are not positive. (Leesa’s thought: This is why I often ask to see the references of certain articles and posts myself because the study they are quoting may not say what the headline/social media post/article says.)
4. US dietary guidelines have been fairly consistent since the 1950s (although an update was promised in 2025 . . . it’s still pending). The US food pyramid ended in 2005 (20 years) and is represented by a plate, not a pyramid.
5. The food industry is always evolving and now has to deal with impacts of GLP-1 drugs on people’s appetites and food choices.

In other words, according to Professor Emeritus Marion Nestle, industry can influence how research is conducted, what results are shared, and how they’re spun presented. I will be on the lookout for the misinformation playbook that casts doubt on science and instead focuses on blaming personal responsibility, urging self-regulation, creating front groups, and lobbying.

It looks like THI has posted recordings of symposium sessions at the link below, plus here are the links to the NOVA classification and Marion Nestle’s wiki page:

• https://truehealthinitiative.org/
• https://www.fsp.usp.br/nupens/en/food-classification-nova/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Nestle

For a list of dozens of credible sites to find health information, plus some PubMed tips, download your free guide here:

4 – True Health Initiative (THI) 2nd Annual Health Misinformation Symposium session on dietary RCTs

Christopher Gardner – “What diet trials can and can’t tell us: mitigating misinformation in nutrition science”

In this session Professor Christopher Gardner shared the benefits and situations where researching a nutrition question using a randomized control trial (RCT) is ideal and when other types of studies are better suited.

Leesa’s top 5 takeaways from this Health Misinformation Symposium session:

1. There was a Netflix docuseries made about one of Professor Gardner’s RCTs (TWIN study) called You Are What You Eat. The docuseries won an Emmy.
2. RCTs are the “gold standard,” for health research to show that something “causes” something else (and is not simply “associated” with something else). However, it is not always possible to conduct RCTs. First off, they’re expensive to do. Also, some RCTs cannot be done (e.g., you can’t strictly enforce people to eat a certain diet every day for weeks, months, or years), and some RCTs should never be done (e.g., randomizing some people to be exposed to something that is very strongly associated with a health issue, like alcohol).
3. When people don’t like or agree with the results of a study, they try to debunk it. Many criticisms of studies are valid. Many criticisms are misinterpretations. Many criticisms are beyond the scope of the study. Some criticisms are based on a rage bait or clickbait headline that are purposefully designed to get more likes and views, rather than honestly representing the study.
4. Two big questions to ask when someone asks if a food/drink is healthy or not: 1) Instead of what? and 2) With what? For example, if someone asks if coffee is healthy, it can be answered by asking if coffee is healthier instead of what? Coffee can be healthy for many people in many contexts, but not for everyone in every context. So, yes, coffee is healthier instead of a milkshake, but is it healthier instead of plain water? It’s also important to understand with what. So, is coffee healthier with what? Is the coffee going to be drunk plain or with a ton of sugar and cream? Is it going to be an ounce of coffee added to a milkshake (which won’t magically make a milkshake healthier)? (Leesa’s thoughts: These are two important contexts that I’m going to start using today: food/drink is healthy instead of what?; and with what?)
5. All types of studies, including non RCTs, contribute to the body of knowledge about a topic, but when looking for proof that something causes something else, it’s almost never black-and-white. Our understanding of human health is a grey-coloured continuum based on the types of research and amount of evidence. See the Causal Continuum slide below. You can see that RCTs are designed to show causation and are used to test hypotheses that have been created based on observational studies. However, because they’re expensive, RCTs are shorter-term and can therefore only test things that happen in the short term, like blood cholesterol or inflammation. Because they’re short-term, RCTs can’t usually test for things that take years to happen, like morbidity (development of disease) or mortality, so this is where observational non-RCT studies give us good evidence, even if it’s not irrefutable proof.

In other words, according to Professor Christopher Gardner, all types of studies contribute to our understanding of health. If it’s possible to do a good RCT, that is ideal, but we also understand that sometimes several large observational (non-RCTs) can give us great evidence.

It looks like THI has posted recordings of symposium sessions at the link below, plus here are the links to Professor Gardner’s website and info about the Netflix documentary based on one of his studies:

• https://truehealthinitiative.org/
• https://med.stanford.edu/profiles/christopher-gardner
• The Netflix docuseries based on one of professor Gardner’s studies

5 – True Health Initiative (THI) 2nd Annual Health Misinformation Symposium session on

David Katz – “Signature threats to signal in the age of noise”

In this session Dr. Katz talks about how much nutrition news is the signal (accurate foundational information) and how, despite our fundamental agreements, there is so much more noise for people to wade through (people disagreeing on details in public).

Leesa’s top 5 takeaways from this Health Misinformation Symposium session:

1. Science isn’t the end goal for science’s own sake. Science is a method that moves us toward accurate understanding. Once science has established a good understanding of how things (our bodies, nutrients) work, we should use that understanding for the good of people and the world.
2. The global consensus on the basics of a healthy diet has been very reliable over the decades. “Basic nutrition science is like gravity.” Dr. Katz likes Michael Pollan’s famous quote to “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” However, Dr. Katz goes one step farther to say that if you eat food, mostly plants, then you don’t really have to worry about eating too much because due to the high water and fibre content of plant-based foods, you will feel fuller on fewer calories.
3. There is so much information available now that most of it is noise.  The signal are those important, true, foundational nuggets of good information.
4. Nutrition experts almost all agree on basic foundational principles of a healthy diet: lots of vegetables and enough protein. This is the signal. The differing opinions are in the details (e.g., what types of vegetables, how much protein), not the foundation. This underlying foundation is not clear to the general public because nutrition experts focus their content on what makes them different and unique. They write books and make videos and social media posts and podcast episodes talking about their personal unique take on the details of nutrition, rather than communicating the overwhelming agreement on what a generally healthy diet looks like. This is the noise.
5. There are three ways to fix the problem of too much noisy health misinformation: 1) Educate the public to hear the signal despite the noise; 2) Turn down the noise; and 3) Make the signal loud enough to be heard despite the noise.

In other words, according to Dr. David Katz, there are consistent, universal principles of a healthy diet that most Americans (and Canadians too) don’t reach. It would be a great start to get everyone to simply eat more vegetables.

It looks like THI has posted recordings of symposium sessions at the link below, plus here is a link to Dr. Katz’s website:

• https://truehealthinitiative.org/
• https://davidkatzmd.com/
• https://oldwayspt.org/blog/common-ground-consensus-or-confusion-you-hold-key/
• https://oldwayspt.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/OW_CommonGround_Nov19.pdf

Signing off and toasting: To keeping up with the latest and greatest credible nutrition information!

Over to you

Did you watch any of these sessions or the recordings and have additional points to share?

What health topic/niche is most important to you?

Let me know in the comments below!