By Michael J. Critelli | MakeUsWell Newsletter, 

Within the next two weeks, we will begin inviting some of you to use our new food intelligence product. Over the past several months, we have been exploring a deceptively simple question: why is it so hard for people to know whether the foods and beverages they consume are actually helping them?

The answer is that nutrition is not one decision. It is a chain of decisions, conditions, and uncertainties. A food or beverage does not have a single fixed value for every person in every circumstance. Its effect depends on where it came from, how it was grown or produced, how it traveled, how it was stored, how it was prepared, what else we consumed with it, and what was happening inside our bodies and minds at the moment we ate or drank it.

There are thousands of nutrition apps, food-rating systems, calorie counters, ingredient scanners, and diet programs. Many are useful. But the next generation of food intelligence must be more ambitious, combining artificial intelligence with human judgment, personal memory, and disciplined evidence review.

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By Michael J. Critelli | MakeUsWell Newsletter, 

For all of the advances in medicine, nutrition science, and artificial intelligence, one of the most poorly understood conflicts in health remains the tension between what is “evidence-based” and what is “personalized.”

We often speak as if they are the same thing. They are not.

Governments regulate medicine, medical devices, foods, and beverages largely on the basis of evidence generated through research. In medicine, the gold standard is the randomized clinical trial: carefully designed studies that isolate the effects of a drug, therapy, device, or procedure and compare outcomes against a control group. The goal of both the randomized clinical trials and “evidence-based medicine” is to assess the effects of whatever is being tested with respect to a large population.

This framework has saved millions of lives.

But the best evidence is never as certain as we want it to be. It never completely enables us to assess the complete effects on every individual. 

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By Michael J. Critelli | MakeUsWell Newsletter, 

Last week, this blog focused on guiding us in how we prepare food. But most of us have a significant percentage of our meals at restaurants. Most people who care about nutrition focus on ingredients, organic produce, lean proteins, and healthy fats. But there’s a hidden variable that often matters just as much, if not more: how the food is prepared, handled, and served.

Unlike when we control food preparation, we rarely see the kitchen. What you do see is the menu, and if you know how to read it, the menu can tell you a great deal about how much nutritional value may have been lost before the food reaches your table.

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By Michael J. Critelli | MakeUsWell Newsletter, 

For individuals who are disciplined about nutrition, reading labels, choosing whole foods, and following evidence-based guidance, there is a critical variable that remains largely invisible: how food is prepared.

We assume that if we select high-quality ingredients, fresh vegetables, lean proteins, and whole grains, the nutritional value is largely preserved. But the evidence tells a more complicated story. The application of heat can materially alter, degrade, or in some cases enhance the nutritional profile of food. And in many cases, the losses are not trivial.

Research consistently shows that heat-sensitive nutrients can decline by 30% to 70% or more, depending on how food is cooked. Vitamin C, one of the most fragile nutrients, provides a clear illustration. Studies show that boiling vegetables can reduce vitamin C content by 40% to over 50%, and under more extreme conditions, high heat combined with longer cooking times, losses can approach 80–90%. In contrast, gentler methods such as steaming or microwaving can preserve 80–90% or more of the same nutrient.

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By Michael J. Critelli | MakeUsWell Newsletter, 

The modern food system rests on a quiet assumption: that what is safe for adults is safe for children. Yet when we examine how studies of foods, additives, and preservatives are actually conducted, that assumption begins to look less like science and more like convenience.

Most controlled nutrition studies are performed on adults. The reasons are practical and ethical: adults can consent, their biology is more stable, and regulators impose fewer constraints. But this creates a structural gap. Children, whose bodies and brains are still developing, are exposed daily to the same additives and preservatives, yet are rarely the primary subjects in the studies used to validate their safety.

This matters because children are not simply “small adults.” Their metabolic systems process chemicals differently. Their brains are in active stages of development. Their exposure, relative to body weight, is often higher. A preservative that appears benign in a 180-pound adult may behave differently in a 40-pound child whose neurological pathways are still forming. The scientific literature acknowledges these differences in principle, but the evidence base often lags behind.

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