From continuous glucose monitors that don’t work, to the cardio benefits of coffee

The year so far

There’s still over a week of January to go, and we’ve already had enough of the good, mad and bad in nutrition research to keep us going well into February.

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The first study that came to my attention put the kibosh on last year’s must-have gadget, the continuous glucose monitor. A CGM is a device you wear on your arm that monitors the changes in your blood sugar levels throughout the day and sends the information to your smartphone.

Intended originally only for diabetics, CGMs are now used by anyone interested in identifying foods that cause spikes in blood sugar. In theory, it’s a great idea if you are at all concerned about diabetes, or if you’re a gadget sort of person.

But I’m glad I never did bother getting one myself, having read about their poor performance in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Researchers from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in the US tested the devices on 30 non-diabetic volunteers.

Each volunteer ate a specific menu for one week and repeated the menu the following week. Both menus were identical - unlike the results. The response to a meal repeated the following week was similar to that of a different meal. In fact the results were so wildly inconsistent that they were considered as good as useless.

Although responses to the same food might be expected to have some variation from one week to the next, the results of this research suggest the workings of a gadget that just doesn’t work. For reliability, it looks like we have to fall back on the trusty old finger-prick test. It might be a bit messy and inconvenient, but it does at least work.

While some people are focused on their blood sugar levels, others are less focused on their dangerously low nutrition status.

The first day of the year saw all the major British newspapers report that the number of people admitted to hospital in England because of a lack of vitamins or minerals is soaring.

There were an astonishing 191,927 such hospital admissions in 2023-2024 and the main nutrient deficiency identified was iron, up 11% on the previous year. Other missing nutrients were folate, and vitamin B12. B12 deficiency accounted for 3,490 hospital admissions.

It’s a sorry state of affairs when large numbers of people in one of the world’s richest countries land in hospital because they are so poorly nourished.

None of the papers, however, spotted the irony (sorry) of such serious and wide-spread iron deficiency, coming as it does after a lengthy and persistent government campaign to get us all to cut down on red meat, the main source of this nutrient.

On the whole people have complied, thinking they are doing themselves a favour. In March 2022 data revealed that Britons ate less meat than at any time since 1972.

Malnutrition is something we’re more used to hearing about in the Global South, especially Africa. Unfortunately for many rural people there, things are likely to get even worse, if Bill Gates gets his way.

The Gates Foundation has been working hard to get Africans to transition away from their traditional, pastoral way of life and subsist off intensive, industrial-scale monoculture, using patented, genetically modified seeds produced by the companies that the Foundation has invested in.

It’s a scheme that anyone with a well-nourished brain can see has disaster written all over it.

The Gates Foundation is also behind many plant-based meat alternative start-up companies, so pardon my schadenfreude when I learn that many of them are going under, mainly because of lack of interest from their intended market. The latest to shut up shop, it was reported in early January, was Sundial, makers of ‘plant-based chicken wings.’ It just never took off.

Still, you have to admire the determination and ambition of these start-up companies, who are ploughing on with their schemes regardless of our disinterest. According to a report in the New Scientist in early January, Food made without farming will go on sale in the US in 2025.

Sounds intriguing. These fantasy foods will be made without plants, animals or even soil. You could call it abstract food.

Still, they must be made from something. Indeed they are: the raw materials are listed as ‘energy’, carbon and hydrogen. Keep it vague, the PR people (probably) said.

From what I understand, these raw materials are created by diverting carbon emissions away from damaging the environment and into synthetic vegan fat. That fat can then be used in place of butter. I don’t know how this alchemy will be performed, but the product’s USP is that instead of reducing emissions, you’ll be eating them. Genius.

While these companies steam ahead with their crackpot schemes, more traditional junk food manufacturers have focused their efforts on infiltrating children’s education, in an approach that has been described as stealth marketing.

A recent investigation by the British Medical Journal has reported that the food industry has ingratiated its way into schools and nurseries through breakfast clubs, nutrition guidance and healthy eating campaigns. The likes of Kellogg’s, Greggs, Cocoa Cola, PepsiCo, Mars, Nestlé, and McDonald’s have all applied themselves to educating the most malleable of minds.

Children are truly up against it. In January we also learned of a study that found that fluoride exposure in children is significantly associated with lower IQ scores. The greater the fluoride exposure, the lower the IQ.

The kids may be doomed, but here’s some good news for us older, coffee-loving folk. The year began with some encouraging research: morning coffee may protect from cardiovascular disease. That’s according to a study published in the European Heart Journal.

In this large observational study, morning coffee drinkers were 31% less likely to die of cardiovascular disease than non-coffee drinkers. All-day coffee drinkers had no reduction in risk compared to the non-drinkers.

The study involved 40,725 people who were asked about their coffee habits between 1999 and 2018. Large observational studies like this tend to be rather weak and their results often meaningless, but I’m prepared to ignore that on this occasion, because this is the sort of thing I and many like me want to believe.

In fact, let’s all hope for more positive studies like this to power us through the rest of what might be a very turbulent year.