Moderate consumption of unhealthy food and beverages is frequently encouraged as a step in the direction toward better health outcomes. You have likely heard messages reflecting this idea many times, from many prominent public health authorities. We’re encouraged by dietary guidelines to not drink alcohol but told that if we do drink, we should practice moderation. We’re told to moderate our consumption of foods high in saturated fat because they are associated with various health risks. We’re told to drink moderate amounts of caffeine-containing beverages, if we choose to drink them at all.
It seems like a no-brainer. Given the choice between moderate consumption and unlimited consumption, most people would surely be better off if they at least make an effort to be more moderate. And maybe moderation is even more sustainable, right? As the common expression goes, it’s important to know when to leave well enough alone. Maybe instead of constantly striving for perfection we should be emphasizing more sustainable progress?
But these are just thoughts. Is there any proof that a moderate approach to dietary change is truly well enough? No matter how commonsensical, intuitive, and virtuous the advice for moderation might seem, does it work? How do such recommendations land in the mind? How do we apply them to our lives? Do we even know what moderation is?
According to research, the answer to the final question is no, we don’t know what moderation is. More often than not, it’s a completely subjective goal, and we are generally very poor at judging whether we have achieved it. Your idea of moderation differs not only from mine but also likely from your own past ideas of moderation, because our definitions of moderation are dynamic and heavily influenced by whatever our current consumption patterns look like.
A series of three studies published in the journal Appetite showed that “definitions of moderation [are] biased by one’s own consumption.”[1] In other words, we tend to conveniently view moderation as whatever we already consume, or else a bit more than that amount.
For example, someone who regularly consumes more cookies than I do is likely to define moderate consumption as an amount greater than I would. One might suspect that overweight individuals could be especially susceptible to this kind of bias, but when the researchers controlled for weight, they found no evidence to support that idea: it turns out that normal weight individuals’ perceptions of moderation are just as likely to be swayed by their preferences.
The authors write, “Endorsement of moderation messages allows for a wide range of interpretations of moderate consumption. Thus, we conclude that moderation messages are unlikely to be effective messages for helping people maintain or lose weight.” Okay, but that’s for weight loss. Is it possible that moderation messaging might effectively support the more important (and less superficial) health outcomes?
I’m skeptical. “People are notoriously poor judges” of their own consumption patterns, including “portion sizes, the caloric content of food, and even the amount of food they have just consumed.”[1] Lacking that judgment, they tend to reflect the consumption patterns of those around them, rationalizing whatever seems normal and confirming the behaviors they would rather not change. We all carry these massive blindspots. Survey data on perceptions of health back this up: as the US society’s standard of health has declined, individuals’ ability to assess their own health has become increasingly inaccurate. If we cannot even accurately identify whether or not we are overweight, how well can we expect to identify whether our diets are healthy?
Given these empirically established psychosocial shortcomings, what is the more likely outcome of a moderation-centered mindset: that we logically land on truly moderate consumption patterns and reap the health benefits of that moderation, or that we simply use the message to continue justifying our destructive behaviors?
You might be thinking right about now that it seems harsh to dismiss all attempts at moderation. I agree. There must be a more effective way to approach this. How might we learn from some of the concerns outlined above?
1. Guidelines must be specific and implementable.
Moderation need not be so subjective and vague. Specific guidelines are essential. And, to be fair, public health institutions sometimes do a decent job at this. For example, recommendations to consume moderate amounts of alcohol are usually accompanied by the specific suggestion for women and men to limit themselves to one drink or two drinks per day respectively.[2]
But specificity isn’t always enough. Even specific suggestions are sometimes difficult to visualize and implement. One or two drinks per day is much easier for most people to conceptualize than the American Heart Association’s advice to limit saturated fat intake to 6 percent of daily calories.[3] “That’s about 13 grams of saturated fat per day,” they write, but tracking that information requires a level of vigilance that many people aren’t going to sustain.
2. We need more awareness
People who are unaware of the risks associated with their behaviors are less likely to actually practice moderation.[4] We need to understand, on some level, why moderate intake is better for us than unlimited consumption, and we need to internalize that information.
The problem is that public confusion about nutrition is off the charts. The vast majority of people understand and accept that alcohol is unhealthy. But does the same consensus exist for, say, animal products? Clearly not. Does the same consensus exist for subcategories of animal products, like red meat? Yes and no. Yes because the most prominent public health institutions reiterate the importance of limiting consumption of red meat; no because the public consciousness has not achieved the same level of consensus. If it did, fads like the carnivore diet would quickly come to occupy a space in the collective imagination similar to that of the flat Earth conspiracy.
Essentially, we need more awareness of what we are eating and why. This also means a greater understanding of and transparency around ingredients like artificial additives, but most importantly, it means greater nutrition literacy, which is in such short supply these days. Until we achieve that awareness, recommendations that are reasonable, specific, and moderate are likely to be met with resistance.
(Learn how we are working to combat nutrition illiteracy.)
3. We need to be able to cook for ourselves
One of the difficulties of messages promoting moderation is that they are incompatible with how many people commonly consume food. We live in a world of Big Macs, not Moderate Macs; a world dominated by seven-patty steakburgers, not nutritionally sane meals resembling what you might find in nature.
It’s often said that today even the poor eat the diets of kings and queens, but the reality is even worse than that. We are fed a constant stream of calorically dense hyperprocessed foods the likes of which even King Louis VI, nicknamed Louis the Fat for his gluttony, couldn’t have possibly imagined.
If the call for moderation is going to make any sense at all, we need to break away from that world. Those who have already adopted a whole food, plant-based lifestyle know that this requires basic cooking skills and sometimes a bit of planning. The convenience food–era makes the opposite seem so easy and appealing. Why cook when you can just stop at the drive through or throw a frozen meal in the microwave? But that convenience carries a surcharge both for your wallet and your health.
(Check out our cooking classes.)
This question comes up occasionally. Does a more moderate approach to the plant-based dietary lifestyle work? How “perfect” do I have to eat in order to reap the benefits? It’s something that many people seem to wonder about when they are first beginning to transition to a whole food, plant-based diet.
Here’s what Dr. T. Colin Campbell has written about this subject, in a previous article:
The closer we get to a 100 percent WFPB lifestyle, the healthier we will be. It may, however, surprise some to learn that I am not aware of any verifiable evidence that 100 percent purity is needed to optimize health for all people at all times; the reason I recommend getting as close to 100 percent WFPB as possible is that dietary addictions—to dietary fat or refined carbohydrates, for example—make it difficult for us to eat only small amounts of unhealthy foods while remaining on the WFPB path. In many ways, it can be easier to transition fully rather than 90 percent.
This largely echoes the rest of this article. The presumed benefits of a more moderate approach to lifestyle change are, in some ways, the very same reasons why a more moderate approach might be less likely to succeed. Allowing yourself more flexibility would be great if you could maintain it, but in some situations that flexibility can be far more difficult than making a complete transition.
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