"So what's the deal? For as long as nutrition research has been going
on, why does it seem so little is known definitively?

Human diet and nutrition are too complex for us to "know it all".
There are almost certainly a hundred essential nutrients for us, we
have hundreds of hormones and enzymes, there are thousands of foods,
and a few billion different life styles.

Patience. We know a lot more about our bodies than we did a century
ago, and we will know far more a century from now. In the meantime,
enjoy life, use common sense, and skip the latest fads. "Moderation
in everything, including moderation"!

In most branches of science the incentive in in getting to the truth.
You figure out how the world works and you can make money by patenting
a novel idea or device.

In nutrition, as in health and pharmaceuticals, there is money to be
made not by finding the truth but in promoting your version of the
truth.

If the truth about sugar were clearly understood by all, including
doctors and parents, sugar would be banned and the sugar industry would
be shut down. So the sugar industry sponsors research that either makes
sugar out to be harmless or makes other food substances to be the
culprit causing all the problems that sugar causes. They benefit by
creating confusing and contradictory "science".

Throw in thousands of companies pushing their various "foods" and their
billions of dollars that they have available for marketting and
"research", and you end up with so much junk science and contradictory
BS that getting to the truth of the matter becomes virtually
impossible.

More than 70% of current "research" is funded by industry sources. The
NIH's are in bed with industry, although they've just brought in
regulations to wean their employees from industry graft. The FDA is
firmly in the pockets of pharmaceutical companies.

There is money to be made in confusing the scinece of nurition. It all
started with a certain "Doctor" Kellogg. He became a doctor after he
started to sell the corn flakes. The "Doctor" thing in front of his
name looked good in his advertising and sold a lot of cereal. And that
has led to what we have now, confusion and a huge food industry.

TC

"In most branches of science the incentive in in getting to the
truth. You figure out how the world works and you can make money by
patenting a novel idea or device."

Most scientists try to get to the truth because they want it for its
own sake. Not to mention that a record of achieving that is what gets
you professional respect, agency grants, and university positions.

Yes, there are marketers in nutrition, just as there are in
automobiles, booze and all other human activities, and there are a
few con-artists and nut cases here too. But, most of the people
involved believe what they say, as the best they can do to tease out
the truth from a zillion variables.

For example, whether you agree with Atkin's or not (I don't, for most
people), the fact is that he saw patients who had carb metabolism
difficulties, in particular some who convert carbs to fat with high
efficiency, and went public with his recommendations because the
medical establishments who disagreed with him tried to throttle him
with simple one-size-fits-all recommendations.

And, Kellogg invented his corn flakes to feed hungry people with no
teeth, not to make money.

There is tremendous variety in human metabolisms, and a thousand
things that can be out of whack. That's the real reason why there are
so many "versions of the truth" in nutrition.

Life and nutrition is a superstiff linear equation with many thousands
variables to be optimized.
(Even a stiff linear equation in hundred variables may take many years
for a Cray II to solve. So trying to solve an equation with maybe 500
known variables, and possibly still many more unknown ones that
research has not uncovered yet, intestinal methane production maybe
one of the newest (a pathological parameter), you get problem solving
them unless you decide for your experiments that all except one or two
are of importance, and do your investigations on how these affect the
material to be researched. Then you get an "answer" and publish that.

Then someone else find that your parameter is only one of several
affecting the system you observe, and suddenly, the truth is something
else. And then it is found that when certain parameters are of certain
value, your parameters have no effect at all.

And so on and on, again :-)
Each time, new stories, new newspaper news, and you get lot of
fundings which is probably the goal.

"70% of researchers are paid by industry to find their version of the
truth."

That leaves 30% of us who are, as I was throughout my career, free to
search for the truth. Look for us.

"Agency grants are controlled by the industry that provide the
funding."

A huge amount of funding comes from government agencies or non-
industry foundations. As a bench scientist for most of my career,
that's all I and my colleagues used.

"Atkins, or low-carb in general, has never presented itself as a one
size fits all."

Exactly what I said in the post - he is opposed by those who do.

"All [Kellogg] wanted was to feed hungry people and he lucks into an
extremely profitable multi-billion dollar international industry.
Come on now, this doesn't happen in the real world."

It did happen that way - check for example the MIT inventors' pages.
The cereal industry was developed by him well after the invention,
and he didn't 'luck in' to it - it took hard work, skill, and
consumer demand.

"all humans have the same metabolism within a narrow range of very
minor and specific variations."

I've spent the last 30 years volunteering with our municipal health
department precisely to help those who fall off one-size-fits-all -
those with severe asthma, allergies, dietary intolerances etc. Among
the 850,000 people served by that department, about 15% of people
meet that description in one significant way or other.

"get lots of natural vitamins and minerals from real, fresh, foods."

Precisely what I've been saying in this group all along. Check my
posts.

Never underestimate the awesome power of greed when it is married, as is
often the case, to stupidity. There are people who have been making
inroads into uncharted territory, against all odds, and with significant
results. The key has been in focusing on what "health" really is,
instead of disease treatment. It will probably take decades and the
deaths of millions of people for the paradigm shift to take place, if at
all, but there is good information available for those who are
interested in understanding what it takes to establish and maintain
their health. Key insights into the importance of nutritional balance
were gained in the process of researching a cancer therapy that involved
using a synthetic form of a naturally occurring compound dubbed
"vitalethine"  by its inventors. The results and future of this radical
approach are presented here:

www.vitalethine.org

The offshoot of this development was a newfound awareness of the immune
system's inner workings that, in turn, indicated the importance of
supporting the metabolic pathways it depends on to fight disease. In
other words, there is a nutritional basis for immunity and metabolism
that has been revealed and can be taken advantage of by anyone with the
time and resources to do so. Perhaps this is less desirable than paying
into a corrupt health care system in the event you require massive
intervention for catastrophic health problems after years of
malnutrition and intoxication have taken its toll, but nothing is
perfect, is it? If, on the other hand, one is truly seeking
alternatives, here is a good place to start:

http://www.vitaletherapeutics.org/immunecf.htm