Nina Teicholz (born May 7, 1965) is a journalist who advocates easing restrictions on naturally-occurring fats, including saturated fats, in the American diet. She is known for her work on fighting obesity, as well as for criticizing government reports and found herself in conflict with government agencies. She is also criticized for being an ally of the meat (beef) and dairy industry. She founded The Nutrition Coalition. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller ''The Big Fat Surprise'', the product of research into hundreds of published scientific studies on nutrition and human health.

Education and early life

Teicholz grew up in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and E ...

. She earned a degree in American Studies at Stanford University, and completed her master's in Latin American Studies at

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...

.Nina Teicholz in Contemporary Authors Online. Gale, 2015. Accessed 18 Feb. 2018.

Career

Teicholz worked as a reporter for

National Public Radio National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

and became a freelancer, contributing to publications including ''The New York Times'', ''The Washington Post'', ''Gourmet'', ''The New Yorker'', ''The Economist'', ''Salon'', and ''Men's Health''. She said that she became interested in dietary fats while doing a series of stories investigating food for ''Gourmet'', and was assigned a story on

trans fat Trans fat, also called trans-unsaturated fatty acids, or trans fatty acids, is a type of unsaturated fat that naturally occurs in small amounts in meat and milk fat. It became widely produced as an unintentional byproduct in the industrial pr ...

that was published in 2004. For many years prior to this initial assignment on

s she had been a

vegetarian Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, insects, and the flesh of any other animal). It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slaughter. Vegetariani ...

.''The New York Times'' Best Seller list that year, and was named one of the Top 10 Non-Fiction Books of 2014 by ''The Wall Street Journal'' and one of the year's best science books by ''The Economist''. The book was criticized by nutritionists including

Marion Nestle Marion Nestle (born 1936) is an American molecular biologist, nutritionist, and public health advocate. She is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health Emerita at New York University. Her research examines s ...

. Teicholz authored an opinion piece with similar themes in ''The Wall Street Journal'' in October 2014 that caught the attention of hedge fund founder John Arnold, who recruited her to join the efforts funded through his Laura and John Arnold Foundation to fight obesity, namely through the Nutrition Science Initiative, which does research, the Action Now Initiative, a lobbying group, and the Nutrition Coalition, which is aimed at improving dietary guidelines. In February 2015, the US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) released its report, written to provide a foundation for the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and ''The New York Times'' published an op-ed by Teicholz criticizing the committee and its work. The Arnold Foundation funded further work by Teicholz on the DGAC report, which was published in the '' British Medical Journal'' in September 2015. In that article, Teicholz continued the themes of her book and her February op-ed, and wrote that the DGAC showed bias against fat and meat and did not use all the available evidence, and that members had undisclosed conflicts of interest. Follow up: The ''BMJ'' circulated a preprint of the article with a press release, and Teicholz' claims were widely covered in the media. The DGAC, the

US Department of Health and Human Services The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive branch department of the U.S. federal government created to protect the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is ...

, the

Center for Science in the Public Interest The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit watchdog and consumer advocacy group that advocates for safer and healthier foods. History and funding CSPI is a consumer advocacy organization. Its ...

, and others, including a petition signed by 180 scientists harshly criticized Teicholz' claims, and they called for the ''BMJ'' to retract the article or issue corrections. The ''BMJ'' issued a correction in October 2015 and another in December 2016, the latter with a statement that after an independent review of the paper, it had decided not to retract it. Meanwhile, the Arnold Foundation had been pressing for Congressional hearings about the DGAC report and attempted to block the release of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans; its lobbying group arranged meetings for Teicholz with members of Congress and White House staff. Teicholz and the Foundation were criticized at the time for being allies of the meat and dairy industries in their lobbying and other public relations efforts to maintain high levels of meat and dairy consumption by US consumers. Teicholz' advocacy has been criticized by Marion Nestle for making strong claims about the benefits of a low-carb, high-fat diet that go beyond what the science can support; Nestle wrote of Teicholz' advocacy: "It does little to foster the health of the public to make nutrition science appear more controversial than it really is." Teicholz is an advocate of

beef Beef is the culinary name for meat from cattle (''Bos taurus''). In prehistoric times, humankind hunted aurochs and later domesticated them. Since that time, numerous breeds of cattle have been bred specifically for the quality or quantit ...

consumption. Beef industry leader Amanda Radke has written in ''Beef Daily'' that "Today's best beef advocates wear a variety of hats ..like Nina Teicholz or

Gary Taubes Gary Taubes (born April 30, 1956) is an American journalist, writer, and low-carbohydrate / high-fat (LCHF) diet advocate. His central claim is that carbohydrates, especially sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, overstimulate the secretion of i ...

who turn against conventional health advice to promote diets rich in animal fats and proteins". In 2017, Salim Yusuf stated that Teicholz "shook up the nutrition world but she got it right", a statement for which he was criticized.

References

External links

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Podcast interview on STEM-Talk
Episode 52. published 5 December 2017 {{DEFAULTSORT:Teicholz, Nina 20th-century American women journalists Living people High-fat diet advocates 1965 births 20th-century American journalists 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American journalists 21st-century American women journalists 21st-century American women writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers American women non-fiction writers Writers from Berkeley, California Journalists from California Stanford University alumni Alumni of the University of Oxford