At the ISSN conference a few weeks back, I had the opportunity to connect with good friends, pick the brains of some of the foremost sports nutrition scientists, talk sports nutrition strategies that work in the real world with the best sports dietitians in the country and learn about sports nutrition for Italy’s World Cup soccer players from Dr. Fabrizio Angelini (physician for Juventus) and Massimo Negro of Societa’ Italiana Nutrizione Sport e Benessere. And I soaked up every minute of it (and some sun, after all, Pensacola Beach is beautiful!). I’ll be blogging about what I learned over the next few days, but, I wanted to start with a conversation I had in the hall with Layne Norton, PhD.
I love talking to Layne because he is bursting with enthusiasm for the many subject areas within sports nutrition. During his PhD he managed to speak throughout the country, write for bodybuilding.com and compete in bodybuilding (his wife, Isabel Norton-Lago is a personal trainer and competitor as well). His knowledge and experience make for a unique perspective on muscle, preventing loss of muscle mass and developing a person’s physique (which I’ll delve into tomorrow). But, the most profound thing we discussed that day, was the fact that there is so much nutrition misinformation out there and in reality, as Layne put it: many of them are right and many are wrong at the very same time. There are two main reasons for this:
1) Nutrition recommendations are made for the majority of people and that majority, here in the U.S., is overweight or obese and either has chronic disease or risk factors for chronic disease; and
2) Nutrition recommendations are made based on the current body of science at the time and what scientists interpret from this body of science (and Food Politics and Food Policy). And sometimes, the interpretation of the science is swayed because we don’t have the full picture (think of the changing recommendations between fat and cholesterol over the past 6 decades) or food policy influences the recommendations made (I’ll cover this tomorrow based on Layne’s presentation at ISSN).
Because of these two factors, the recommendations you hear in the news may not be right for you (think about the lower sodium recommendations – if you are an athlete, lowering your sodium intake could be dangerous). How do you know if they are or if they aren’t? Well, you can read about the subject matter you are interested in and decide for yourself or, seek the help of a dietitian who specializes in that particular area (sports, GI health, diabetes, CVD and more). The bottom line is this: nothing about nutrition is the exact same for every person.