Dr. Jessica Knurick reveals a truth most nutrition experts won’t admit: our food system is designed for profit, not health, and over half of American adults are living with chronic disease as a result. As a science-based dietitian who lost her grandfather to preventable illness at 60, she’s spent her career fighting back against fear-mongering and misinformation that keeps people confused and sick. In this eye-opening conversation, she exposes why seed oils aren’t the villain everyone claims, how ultra-processed foods hijack your brain to make you overeat 500 calories a day, and why the most effective health advice is actually boring. You’ll walk away understanding that 90 percent of nutrition science is settled and simple, but social media algorithms profit from making you believe everything is controversial and complicated.
The Truth About Nutrition: Why Our Food System Isn’t Built to Keep You Healthy
"You can set systems up in order to see the most people succeed or the most people fail. And our food system is set up, very much so, for the most people to fail."
And now let’s jump into episode 1845 of The School of Greatness!
Some Questions I Ask:
- Is our American food system setting us up to be healthier or more sick currently as it’s set up?
- Why wouldn’t the system be set up for us to succeed?
- From all of your research in the last few years, what have been some of the shocking stats you’ve seen around our health system or around chronic disease in the health system?
- What is the root cause then of chronic disease?
- Isn’t it, at the end of the day, all of our individual choice that we get up and we move and what we put in our mouth?
- How do we override convenience and this kind of habits that we have built over years because the system has made it so easy for us to access ultra processed foods?
- What are the science-backed research that you’ve seen that can help people heal from the inside out?
- What is a big myth that you’re seeing that a lot of people get behind as a health or food trend lately?
- Is there a way in which people can enjoy sugary foods and still live a healthy lifestyle?
- What is the thing in the last five to 10 years as a scientist and researcher around nutrition that you’ve personally done to shift something in your lifestyle or food habits that have supported you being healthier?
- How much do our thoughts and emotions affect the health of our body?
- What should I be thinking about as a parent with my kids coming into the world in 2025 about how to raise them in the healthiest way around nutrition and food?
- When someone feels paralyzed by all of the food, health and nutrition information that’s out there, what are a few steps they can take to start feeling more at peace about understanding what is correct and what is misinformation?
- What are a few things that people are talking about or debating about that are making these claims like this is the greatest breakthrough in health and nutrition over the last five years where you really don’t have the research to back it?
- What frustrates you the most as a nutrition scientist and researcher?
- What scares you as a mother and what’s to come in our systems, the food system, nutrition, health and wellness?
- What do you think would be the greatest change that could happen over the next decade in nutrition, in food, in the health system if we’re able to make in the next decade?
In this episode, you will learn:
- Discover why our food system is engineered for the majority of people to fail at health, not succeed, and how this affects every choice you make
- Understand why over 90 percent of Americans fail to meet basic vegetable and fiber intake while chronic disease continues its relentless climb
- Break through the seed oil controversy by learning what the actual research shows versus what social media wants you to believe for clicks
- Transform your family’s relationship with food using the inclusion method that gets kids excited about nutrition without the good food bad food trap
- Master the art of spotting nutrition misinformation by recognizing fear-based hooks and learning who actually deserves your trust online
- Plus much more…
