I started paying attention to Patrícia Mourão de Andrade's writing because of a luminous critique she wrote of the film "Bacurau" by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles. The film (which is well worth seeing) could also be called "The Sertão is when you least expect it" and gains a new perspective under the insightful gaze of the journalist. This is one of the functions of those who help us observe the reality of things with different eyes. Recently, a phrase of hers made me want to write this short end-of-year reflection. In times of pandemic and "For a long time I could only read," she wrote. And she continued, "This had to do with an excess of image consumption, because we lived through a manic syndrome of image consumption, of image production. Perhaps we were just in a kind of unprocessed vomit."
At the end of 2020, it seems to me that hyperbole can well be applied to our profession. It was a year in which we accelerated the maniacal consumption of images and their production on our social networks. It was a year in which we increased our presence in digital media, with increasingly appealing images, but, at the same time, with increasingly fragile scientific content. Longer, more difficult-to-read, more mature, more original things seem to have had less space and less attention. Repeated, reworked, and replicated ideas, based on some original thought, multiplied. What I found most was light nutritional thinking. The need to communicate quickly, to respond quickly, to be on several digital platforms almost simultaneously (which became possible) encouraged the use of these "digital remediation" technologies where what matters is being present. As João Pedro Cachopo writes in his magnificent “The Twisting of the Senses: Pandemic and Digital Remediation” – It is important not to forget that the new media, which allow for remote interaction, distance learning, and remote concerts, ultimately aim for closer contact. In other words, they contain a “promise of proximity” or, as he describes later, “…a remediated experience.” This model was not new. The pandemic only accelerated it.
This communication model seems to work well for an information-consuming audience that doesn't perceive complexity or doesn't make an effort to understand it. To deal with this difficulty in comprehension and with this more difficult audience, increasingly infantilized informational pieces have been created, risking infantilizing those who write them. In parallel, the audience that uses social media only to confirm what they want to hear has grown, also without the desire to understand or question the more complex aspects and the way science is done.
At the end of each food/nutritional quip, we can always say, "it is necessary to inform in order to increase literacy." It would be worthwhile to reflect on the fact that literacy is synonymous with capacity. That is, empowering is not quite the same thing as informing or transmitting information, even if simplified, through different means of communication. This confusion is very present in the debate we started in Pensar Nutrição about simplified nutritional labeling , a communication strategy important for facilitating consumer choice, particularly for the less literate, but not necessarily capable of generating more autonomous, involved and reflective citizens about their own diet.
But while the strategy for disseminating science is one thing, and empowering individuals to make healthy food choices can be another, with both sometimes intersecting (which is natural), it is less natural for the simplification of scientific discourse to become the norm in the communication of nutrition professionals. Or at least, for simplification to begin before understanding how complex something can be, reversing a healthily established maxim that only those who have already understood the complexity and navigated it have the right to attempt simplification. Now, to understand the complex, one must invest in its decoding, and in this process invest time, read extensively, and regularly update a great deal of scientific information, which seems incompatible with the ability to talk about everything in a simplified and recurring way, seeking out the sensitive points of media debate. As if the most valuable information stemmed from a permanent identification of what is trending on social media and not from a necessary scientific curiosity.
This need is even greater in times of many questions and few answers stemming from the current pandemic. The accelerated search for information and widespread anxiety creates a conducive environment for confusing quick answers with simple ones. The times of instability ahead require the scientific leadership of nutritionists . Topics such as climate change and food production , the growing inequalities resulting from access to digital culture and the generalization of teleworking, which will bring successive waves of food insecurity to large segments of the population, or even the merging of infectious diseases with chronic diseases as seen in COVID-19, require the full participation and in-depth debate of nutrition professionals. And a great deal of technical discussion.
The recent case of COVID-19 is a good example . An infectious disease that more severely affected obese, hypertensive, and diabetic individuals—chronic diseases where the role of nutritionists is essential, and where the reduction of inflammatory processes that can be induced by dietary therapy—should have been widely discussed and implemented at all levels of healthcare, yet it received almost no technical discussion among us, although with rare and honorable exceptions .
In these times of simplified nutrition, it's worth keeping an eye on the complex writing and dense reading of certain scientific texts that leave us with more questions than answers. Texts that advance very little in their conclusions and that don't rely on the grand and easy conclusions that always accompany simplistic discourses. Perhaps that is indeed my wish for 2021. To have the hope that many of us who chose this profession will read more, read more complex texts, be more cautious when writing, and, even more so, be more judicious in using images excessively and exclusively to communicate nutritional thought.
The work of a nutritionist places us at the deepest core of humanity and at the basic pulse of any living being – the need to eat. But also at the acute perception of how societies are structured in the face of this dependence and fragility in relation to nature, which produces food. These situations compel us to interpret science, but also to listen to the world and respect others and their beliefs regarding food. From this complicity between biology and a society that has organized itself around the table, this marvelous profession is born, a profession that needs to be increasingly protected in times of hyper-communication and scientific superficiality.
PS Our best wishes for a Happy New Year extend particularly to all students and nutritionists who are entering the workforce for the first time during these pandemic times, and to all Brazilian students and colleagues who crossed the ocean this difficult year in search of more tranquility, training, and professional opportunities. We wish you all the greatest happiness and the fulfillment of your dreams throughout 2021.
Written by
Pedro Graça, Director of the Faculty of Nutrition and Food Sciences at the University of Porto