“Theory contained in textbooks cannot be reproduced uncritically, but must be put in context with the latest research. Because the knowledge base is changing. But our dietary advice doesn’t keep up,” writes a group of employees at Oslo Nye Høyskole in a column on Ytring. Yes, the knowledge base is certainly changing. I don’t know which textbooks the chronicle authors are referring to, but in June 2023 we received the best and most up-to-date knowledge base on the connection between diet and health that exists globally, the new Nordic nutritional recommendations NNR 2023. And fortunately and naturally, the revised dietary guidelines that will come next summer have the world’s largest and newest knowledge base as a base. The difference between knowledge base and research is not immediately easy to understand. Research drives the world forward. It is done by researchers or research groups who have a hypothesis about a connection which they are to find out if true. Food and health are hot topics in research, and each day an average of approx. 350 research articles on the topic. These are different types of studies, of different size and quality. Some are of low quality and are ignored, while many of them are very good, and generate hypotheses so that one decides to do more research on it. The fact that so many studies are published is very good, but national recommendations cannot be made on the basis of individual studies. Then the advice would change significantly from day to day, and would not be well suited as a platform for good choices in everyday life. Knowledge summaries are therefore made. These look at the total amount of research, weigh the quality of the studies, and see if there are enough studies of good enough quality that point in the same direction. Based on such summaries of knowledge, national recommendations are drawn up. In NNR 2023, more than 400 experts on diet and health have reviewed all available research on diet and health from 2012 to 2023. The dietary advice has a very high level of trust among the population. We must manage that trust in a good way. That is why we, as national authorities, must rely on large Nordic or international groups, which delve deeply into all research, not just that which supports their theories, to give us a decision-making basis that both professionals and the public can trust. Fat is not easy. Fat, and especially saturated fat, is an ever-recurring topic. In 2017, we in the Directorate of Health asked the National Council for Nutrition to review the existing knowledge to see if there was a basis for changing the advice on saturated fat, based on new research. The Nutrition Council then found that the advice on saturated fat and low-fat dairy products had been strengthened based on the latest research. And now the Nordic subject experts in NNR 2023 have once again reached the same conclusion, after reviewing all the knowledge that has come up to the spring of 2023. For us as national health authorities, it is important that both the population and subject experts are confident that national dietary advice is in no way based on outdated textbooks, but on the best summarized research in the area. Follow the debate:
ttn-69
Too easy about fat – Speech
