What Shapes the Nutrition Advice We Hear Every Day?
A conversation with independent researcher Belinda Fettke on the historical, cultural, and commercial forces behind modern dietary guidelines.
What shapes the nutrition advice we hear every day? It's a question most of us rarely stop to ask — yet the answer, it turns out, is far more complex than we might expect. In this thought-provoking conversation, I sat down with Belinda Fettke, an independent researcher who has spent years examining the historical, cultural, and commercial influences that have helped shape modern dietary guidelines and public health messaging.
Drawing on years of independent research
Drawing on years of independent research, Belinda explores the origins of low-fat dietary recommendations, the rise of the health food movement, and the complex intersection of ideology, industry, and nutrition policy. It's a layered history — one that invites us to think carefully about how dietary narratives are formed, who influences them, and what this may mean for individual choice and informed decision-making.
A fascinating look at the history of nutrition
Whether you agree with all of Belinda's conclusions or simply enjoy exploring different perspectives, this conversation offers a fascinating look at the history of nutrition. Above all, it encourages critical thinking about the messages that influence how we eat today.
Watch the full vodcast above and consider: where does the nutrition advice you follow actually come from?
WATCH HERE
About our Belinda Fettke
Belinda Fettke describes herself as a change-agent in the nutrition space, challenging the health benefits of low-fat, high-carbohydrate dietary guidelines as truly ‘evidence-based’ after researching both the vested interests, and religious ideology, shaping dietary and health messaging globally.
Belinda’s research has focused on; “Who decides what we eat, when we eat, and why?” and includes the history of vegetarianism, the invention of ‘health food’, the emergence of dietetics as a profession, and the Global Influence of the Seventh-day Adventist Church on Diet.
Over the last decade she has discovered an unexpected intersection between Seventh-day Adventist ideology and commercial vested interests, both intent on demonising animal protein and fats. Incredibly, this symbiotic relationship has helped manifest our current ‘plant-biased’ dietary and health guidelines.Belinda states she is not anti-religion nor is she anti-vegetarian, as a personal choice, but she is very concerned about dietary preferences being taken away from those who choose to include meat, dairy, and eggs in their diet. Taking away choices that may negatively impact an individual’s health outcome.
Belinda challenges recent attempts by regulators to ‘silence’ healthcare professionals from broad and meaningful discussions on nutrition and from using #FoodasMedicine, with the threat of de-registration should they deviate from the ‘guidelines’ which have somehow become strict ‘rule-books’ protected by Associations with ties to industry.
Learn more at Belinda Fettke Instagram
