Interesting: The Nutrition Science Initiative

Nonprofits begin with the awareness of a problem that needs to be solved, and then a simple question: if we don’t do it, who will?

Nutrition Science Initiative

For us, the problem is inescapable: Over the course of our lives, we’ve witnessed extraordinary progress in science, technology, and medicine, yet these advances have been accompanied by unprecedented increases in the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans. The seemingly simple question of what constitutes a healthy diet – what should we eat to live long and active lives – has remained mired in endless controversy. The official wisdom certainly doesn’t seem to be helping, and a morass of diet books and websites are at odds about which approaches might be better.

In April 2011, after a brief email correspondence, we met in person for the first time. Sitting in a café in Oakland, California, we spoke at length about our personal and professional obsessions with diet and health, and about this national failure to curb the ongoing epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes.

More than anything, we discussed what it might take to solve the problem. One fact seemed clear: the medical research establishment had simply failed to provide definitive, unambiguous answers to these unresolved questions of diet and health. Despite billions of dollars spent on medical research, the definitive experiments had never been done, having been perceived as either too expensive, too difficult, or simply not worth the effort.
Our solution was to create the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI), an organization that would provide the resources necessary for independent researchers to do the hard science that could indeed answer these controversial but critical questions once and for all.

We don’t know how this undertaking will end.  We are not invested in particular outcomes.  We are invested in finding scientifically sound solutions, and we remain loyal to the mission of communicating the results in a consistent manner that can be both heard and understood by influential scientists, policy makers, the media, and the general public.  We look forward to the day when NuSI is no longer necessary, when – with the full support of rigorous science – we can choose with informed confidence what to eat and what to feed our families.
We thank you for your interest in NuSI.

Gary Taubes and Peter Attia, M.D.
Founders, Nutrition Science Initiative