
By Thomas Oriti.
Leading nutritional scientists are calling for a radical re-think in the way we understand diet that looks at how mixtures of nutrients influence health rather than nutrients in isolation.

The old-fashioned food pyramid may be outdated as nutritionists develop a new model that will help people better understand diets and disease. Source: Nutrition Australia
Researchers at the University of Sydney's Charles Perkins Centre have developed a new framework for nutritional health that looks at the links between certain diets, health and disease.
Professor Stephen Simpson, academic director at the centre, said focusing on a single nutrient had worked in the past, such as helping to solve problems like micronutrient deficiency.
However, he said when it came to understanding the problems of over-nutrition issues, such as obesity and diabetes, a focus on single nutrients as the culprit, or cure, would not work.
"Identifying the fact that if you didn't eat enough vitamin C in your diet you ended up with scurvy, and if you added vitamin C in sufficient quantities, you didn't get scurvy," he said.
"That was a single nutrient approach that worked. But when it comes to trying to understand the problems of over-nutrition, obesity and diabetes for example, focusing on single nutrients as the culprit or perhaps even the cure of these conditions, it doesn't work," he said.
Top Comments
The only way we should accept a new nutritional pyramid is if it is created without any influence by the agriculture industry and is based on the latest scientific (independently - not big food corp funded) evidence. Based on this, the new pyramid would be recommending a vegan/raw lifestyle. Whether we like it or not, this is what research is telling us we should eat. Anything else is just marketing to keep farmers in jobs.