How should we feed ourselves

Advice abounds on how individuals “should” eat. The Healthy Trinity quadrant (right) is informed by Motivational Interviewing and focuses on the art and science of health promotion to try to resolve ambivalence about food advice. The Science quadrant is informed by longitudinal, prospective cohort studies namely, the Nurses’ Health Study, EPIC Oxford and the Health Professionals Follow Up Study and takes life expectancy as the measure of health to recommend four categories of food with the most robust evidence for promoting health. Meat and dairy for example are not included as there is ambivalence about their effect on health and the planet.   

The Art, Lifestyle and Ethics quadrants are inspired by Mozzafarian et al’s (2018) history of nutritional science and Phelan et al’s (2023) call to contextualise dietary quality assessment in a holistic framework, by recommendations from highly evidenced, normative sources such as Ireland’s national Healthy Eating guidelines, the Eat Lancet Commission on Food and the Mediterranean Diet and by a Whole Person Medicine methodology that examines different ways of knowing. Popular cultural diets also inform these quadrants. There are too many to name and considerable variability in the quality of evidence behind them. Some examples include Intermittent Fasting, Farm to Fork, Keto Food Pyramid, Vegan Diets, Glycaemic Load and Index, Intuitive Eating, Wheat Free Diets, Ago-ecological Food Policy Frameworks, the Longevity Diet, Slimming World, Mindful Eating, Eating for Your Microbiome, GMO free diets, organic diets and innumerable cookbooks. Bringing an awareness of these diets and food trends to the quadrants recognises the importance of engaging in the wider conversation on food. It also provides opportunities to reflect on the evidence underpinning food-based recommendations and the best tone and method of communicating our understanding of this aspect of health.  

The Nexus question at the centre is inspired by the IPBES (2024) nexus assessment which examines interlinkages among five elements: biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change. Health promotion is tasked with creating environments that support health. This Plan outlines how Trinity will contribute to creating a food system supportive of eating at the nexus of Science, Art, Lifestyle and Ethics.