If you’re at all familiar with Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science blog and Guardian column, you’ll have some idea of what his talk was about - debunking nutritionists, the multi-billion dollar industry nutritional supplement industry they have built, and the overblown claims about the benefits of various food products.

Title: Food, Fads & Fantasies

Abstract: We are frequently bombarded with very specific claims on food and health by the media, the food supplement pill industry, the “functional foods” industry, and the new unregulated “nutritionists”. Diet is undoubtedly one of many important lifestyle risk factors for ill health. But to what extent are these stories based in reality? Frequently they rely on basic - and fascinating - errors in scientific reasoning. They quote studies which do not exist, rely only on laboratory data, or extrapolate from weak observational data to make explicit clinical claims. Sometimes there is evidence to show that the claims are actively wrong, and that the advice or commodities being sold may even be harmful. But more than that, there is a risk that this very prescriptive, overcomplicated dietary advice - which speaks so far in excess of the evidence - can be confusing and disempowering, a distraction from simpler health advice, and possibly even detrimental to public health.

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