I don't know about you, but it feels like every month there is a new food trend, a new advice on what to eat, what to avoid, what's popular. So why are we always on the lookout for the next big thing? Samantha King is a professor and director of the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen's University.

It's certainly an important factor in terms of reaching really broad and diverse demographics in a very constant way. But it's not the only factor. And, you know, media has been monetizing and indeed playing on fears about our health and our strength and aging for decades before we had social media. So I try to emphasize that it's important and it's especially important in moments of uncertainty and crisis. I don't think it's a coincidence that protein talk really intensified during the pandemic. For instance, you know, we can't control global supply chains or, you know, the climate changes that might produce pandemics, but we can measure and fixate on the nutrients we're ingesting. And social media really helps with that.

Influencers arguably have a wider reach than health professionals, and some may even argue that they have the trust of many people online. What are your concerns with influencers offering health advice to people?

Some influencers are, in fact, medical doctors and nutritionists, right? So there isn't really a clear dividing line. And I think that's one of the things that can produce confusion and information, contradiction and overload. For me, the concern is less about the information. If one has a medical condition, one's doctor, if one is fortunate enough to have a doctor, is the person who's going to be able to help you manage your diet. For me, it's more about the way that this constant encouragement and advice to focus on our diets in a way that treats our bodies as, you know, machines to be tinkered with and fixed really diminishes our relationship to food as a source of pleasure and community. And that influence is really strong. I mean, there's a way in which we're all acting as if we're elite athletes, right? For whom finding the optimum diet combination is going to increase performance. But most of us are not in that category, right? We're just living our lives. And it's really distorted our relationship to food.

Everywhere I go, whether it's a coffee shop, a restaurant, or even at my family dinner with my extended family, we are talking about protein. And I need to understand why is everyone talking about protein?

That is a great question. There are a number of reasons. You know, one thing to say is that our obsession with protein actually goes back to the 19th century, when it was first identified as a category of nutrition and the first protein booster, if not influencer, was a 19th century German scientist by the name of Baron von Liebig, who invented the first protein supplement. So there is a long history, but there's also a shorter history because some of us, if we're old enough to remember, will remember that carbs were the charismatic nutrient of the 1970s and then during the 80s and 90s, we slowly saw a shift towards protein as the fixation. And that's really intensified in the last ten or so years. And it comes from a number of places.

I mean, one is the industry. We tell the story. And in our book about the excess of whey that was created as a result of the industrialization of the dairy industry in the mid-20th century. And farmers needed something to do with all this toxic by-product of cheese production. And we're dumping it into rivers and streams. And it was killing the algae, and that was choking the fish that was presenting huge environmental problems. And they figured eventually, after many years of experimentation to a way to dehydrate whey and create a palatable, palatable and digestible product. And that's the protein powder that is most popular today. If you see a protein fortified product on the shelves in the grocery store that almost certainly has whey in it. And so they needed to create a market for that. And elite athletes and bodybuilders were certainly one such market. But that's not enough, right? You have to keep growing and building your market and that's how we've now seen the protein fixation spread across demographic groups.

And then the other part of it is the association with protein, with strength, with muscle growth, but increasingly with, you know, healthy skin and being full and brain power and menopause, you know, there isn't a problem to which protein hasn't been offered as a solution. And it's very malleable in that way. It doesn't have the same negative connotation that, say, fats or carbs have. There's no such thing really as bad protein where there is or too much protein, right? Where that isn't true of fats or carbs.

I want to move on to another trend that we're seeing, but very quickly as a society, when it comes to protein, are we actually deficient in protein or are we actually consuming a decent amount already?

Close to 100% of Canadians are eating enough protein according to the official guidelines. So we're getting enough. Protein is in everything from lettuce to potatoes. And if you're getting enough nutrients overall, if you're getting enough calories, you're getting enough protein. The only exceptions to that are people who are seriously ill or frail, who may be required to take additional protein, but they are in the tiny minority of people in Canada. We don't need this protein, this extra protein that we're being encouraged to consume.

Okay, well, let's talk about another macronutrient that's getting its attention, fibre. I will admit, I myself might be looking at how I can possibly get more fibre in my diet. I might not be quote unquote fibre maxing, but help us understand why do we become so obsessed with food trends?

Yeah, that's it's a great question. And again, it predates the present moment. And I think it really has to do with the way we are encouraged and taught to think about our bodies, which is that we're responsible for them. No one else is going to save you, right? I mean, we're we have a collapsing health care system. We have corporations who have a real interest in selling products that are have a kind of automatic association with health, even if they're full of sugar and, you know, highly processed foods, there's a veneer of health that's attached to them. So there's a political motivation to ask people to look after themselves. There's a corporate motivation and we're, you know, a good person in our society as a person who tries to optimize the health, right? Not just maintain it, but measure it and make it most efficient and productive, right? That's what we're supposed to be doing with our bodies. And these magic bullets that come along are extremely appealing.

Right. And I think the fibre one is really interesting. I'm being asked a lot about fibre in the last few weeks. I think it's a trend that began on TikTok. And you know, my immediate response, because I too, I'm subject to these trends. None of us can step outside of this ideology as much as we try to. I mean, I'm a professional diet skeptic and I still can't look at my dinner without thinking about the nutrients in it. You know, my kind of knee jerk reaction is to say, okay, you know, fibre is that we actually don't get enough fibre. The research suggests, you know, there are health issues that we're facing as a society that are linked to not enough fibre in our diet. So maybe it's not as problematic as the protein obsession. On the other hand, my research ahead says, you know, again, with searching for this magic bullet, with searching for this quick fix, will lurching from one trend to another. And this is it's not this is not going to save us. There is no single nutrient that is the solution to optimal health.

All right. I want to talk sort of demographics. Historically, diet culture has targeted women. Is that the case with these trends that we're seeing now?

I do think that's one of the really interesting shifts. I mean, certainly with Lookmaxxing and optimization trends in general, men are huge part of that. One of the things that I've written about is the muscular manosphere and the absolute centrality of protein and other supplement sales to the economy of the manosphere, the way that influences male influencers, touting certain kinds of masculinity are able to do what they do, are able to make a living from that. So that's really shifted. And I think the kind of really critical relationship to the body that women have been taught to take up for decades and centuries is intensifying for men. And we can see this in the research and we can see it probably in our everyday lives, too, that now the focus, the particular goals of the diet might be different. The particular rationale for focusing on one particular way of eating versus another could be gendered. It's certainly, you know, related to age to some extent, food cultures. But that's also one of the damaging things I think about these trends is that they're global, right? And they kind of override the beautiful differences in diet that makes the world an interesting and pleasurable place to live in.

Well, you talk about that global reach and how effective and attractive it is to some people. If there is someone who has fallen for these diet trends, how do they cut through the noise? What advice do you have for people?

Yeah. So, you know, Michael Pollan, who's a famous writer and food critic, has a nice saying, which is, eat food. Not too much, mostly plants. And I think that, as much as it's really hard as one individual person to resist these trends, I really like that mantra. We know that most of us are getting the food that we need, and at the same time that we see this absolute fixation on the components that make up our diet, this treating the body as a biochemical experiment or a motor car to be tinkered with. We also see a lot of pleasure in cooking and procuring food and eating and communicating about it and building relationships through it. And I think the more that we can focus on that and celebrate that approach, the easier it will be to move away from this really reductive and I think, damaging approach.

Samantha, I really appreciate you taking the time, chatting with us on The Rundown today. Thank you so much for your insights.

Thank you. It was a pleasure talking with you.