Currently reading What to Eat Now, by Marion Nestle

Rajiv Vakani

Certainty arrives faster than understanding.

Food, health, evidence, and the space between the first answer and the better one.

Questions I keep returning to

the next study the question before the answer after the headline context changes everything what your grandmother knew after the trend correlation is not enough certainty travels fast food is more than nutrients the harder problem is behavior evidence has limits too better questions first
Why nutrition advice keeps changing

Tradition Marion Nestle Ultraprocessed food Is more always better? Seed oils What gets repeated? What counts as evidence?
What “natural” actually means

Food culture Cultural memory Michael Pollan Why not a South Asian diet? Is tradition evidence? Food or nutrients?
Where experts disagree

Walter Willett Gut health Fasting Sarcopenia Protein obsession? What counts as healthy?

Where this came from.

The questions came later. The first problem was practical: I came home from a year abroad underweight and wanted the weight back. I read what I could find. The weight came back within a year. The reading didn’t stop. At some point I realized I’d stopped reading about how to gain weight. I was reading about ingredients, evidence, gardening, how people eat in different places, behavior, food systems. The original question had turned into a much bigger one. That’s what I write about now.

The rest is on Journey.

What’s open right now.

  • Reading. A long paper on legumes, fiber, and what fermentable carbohydrates actually do in the gut.

Inside the site

The work is here.

Four series built as their own rooms. Essays you can open by name. Then the full map in Insights, and every piece on the Library shelf.

Four series

  • Seeing Food Differently Five chapters

    A kitchen guide to noticing food: starting state, flavor, knife cuts, heat, and steering.

  • Traditional Therapy Profiles 39 profiles

    Herbs, formulations, and product patterns in South Asian traditional medicine, separated when one name tries to mean all three.

  • Emerging Therapies 10 investigations

    A research studio for therapies changing nutrition counseling while the evidence is still forming.

  • Intervention Maps 3 conditions

    Compare the evidence for exercise, therapy, nutrition, supplements, and other approaches for common health conditions.

From the essays

Fourteen published pieces, and more in draft

Where to go next

The writing arranged by subject, with the series framed together: begin in Insights.

Looking for one piece by name? The full shelf is in the Library.