Ask HN: Is there a comphrenesive course or resource on understanding nutrition?

35 points by elkali 8 years ago | 10 comments

moh_maya 8 years ago |

NIH has some good resources [1]; also the Mayo clinic [2]. Finally, examine.com [3] has lots of information on a whole bunch of supplements, vitamins, etc.

[1] https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/wecan/tools-res...

[2] https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h...

[3] https://examine.com/

beaconstudios 8 years ago | |

+1 for examine.com, they collate and simplify studies to the point where you don't need any related scientific knowledge to grok them, and provide dimensions that help you to understand the trustworthiness of the result, and the strength of the effect.

whak 8 years ago |

https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:WageningenX+NUTR10...

NUTR101x - Nutrition and Health: Macronutrients and Overnutrition

"For anyone who is interested in the relation between nutrition and health and wants to acquire the skills to better weigh and interpret the information overload about nutrition and health."

This is a free, self-paced course by WageningenX and hosted by edX.

ranc1d 8 years ago |

Sigma Nutrition is a very good evidence based nutrition podcast [1] . It also has some great articles [2] and has a list of recommended resources as well [3].

[1] http://sigmanutrition.com/ [2] http://sigmanutrition.com/blog/ [3] http://sigmanutrition.com/recommended-resources-2/

fractallyte 8 years ago |

The books of Adelle Davis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelle_Davis). Writing in the mid-20th century, she was way ahead of her time. She's just as relevant now as she ever was.

She had detractors (and I'm sure someone here will be quick to point them out). Just ignore them and read her best known book Let's Eat Right To Keep Fit: it's an excellent and comprehensive introduction to nutrition.

The final chapters go beyond nutrition - they're a manifesto for building glowing health, first starting with oneself, then family, and finally society; all on a foundation of good soil and sound agriculture. They truly instill a sense of infectious hope and optimism. You'll want to be a soil scientist, or farmer, or nutritionist. Even the references lead one on to the ideas of permaculture, before the term was even invented.

How Not to Die by Dr. Michael Greger is another superb book (mentioned by others here).

chrisa 8 years ago |

https://nutritionfacts.org/ Is a great resource (and nonprofit) where Dr Greger reviews all the latest scientific studies about nutrition, and then summarizes them in videos. They also post to youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/NutritionFactsOrg

Spoiler alert: all of the videos can be summed up by: "eat a whole food, plant based diet".

As a general note though - nutrition as a science is _hard_, because everyone responds slightly differently to the same foods in unexpected ways, and it's really hard to do double blind, controlled trials over a long period of time (they cost too much, or are just unfeasible). So I think the best approach is to read/watch a lot of different content from different sources, in order to gain a wide understanding of the current research.

pzone 8 years ago |

You could look up syllabi for masters and PhD programs in nutrition.

karimdag 8 years ago |

I heard lots of good things about Deep nutrition (a book).

gmiller123456 8 years ago |

Not quite what you're looking for, but this SciShow episode [1] tries to explain why so many studies seem to contradict each other. tl;dr they usually study different things, and studies on humans are very difficult to control.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPIQ7YhE4cE

naturapath009 8 years ago |

https://www.naturopathy-uk.com/ has some links however the actual sylubus pretty comprehensive course, and tends to look at aspects of curriculum not covered by traditional (and reductionalistically broken) alopathic medicine.

Patrick Holford is considered by many as a goto know all for holistic nutrition https://www.patrickholford.com/