I took supplements for years, then decided most nutrition science is worthlessAgainst supplements

A writer who once recommended a long list of supplements stopped taking all of them after concluding that he had mostly hunted for evidence that confirmed his views, and that around 90 percent of nutrition research is nearly worthless.

A few years ago this person had a long list he recommended to others: choline, vitamin K2, fish oil, wheat germ, glycine. He now takes none of it.

The method sounded reasonable

His test had three parts: our ancestors ate more of it and modern diets do not; there is a plausible mechanism for how it works; and studies, ideally trials, show that people who get more of it are healthier.

Nothing wrong with the logic. The problem was the person applying it. He admits to a taste for rare, fresh opinions that others do not hold — the more contested, the more fun.

Add a lifelong obsession with food, diets switched like religions, and he could always find grounds to believe modern people are short on K2.

Most papers get even the sign wrong

What broke him was something else: the average nutrition paper is so bad — fraud, p-hacking, the usual — that the errors do not just inflate an effect, they can reverse its sign.

Dozens of papers can be produced showing something false, and a bandwagon effect means people do exactly that.

Take the claim that the amino acid glycine extends life by blocking methionine's effect on a signalling pathway. With evidence this weak, how do you know the amino acid you are taking is not acting as the one it is supposed to block?

He now thinks around 90 percent of research is nearly valueless, and that no pile of papers adds up to a reliable conclusion. The friend who always joked that he was just pissing it out had the last laugh.