Nutrition, stripped back to what the evidence supports.

Macronutrients, the micronutrients people genuinely run short on, how the major eating patterns compare, and which supplements survive scrutiny. No superfoods, no detoxes, no moral categories for food.

Calculate your macros

Compare eating patterns

Energy balance is the frame, not the whole picture

Body weight over time tracks the difference between energy consumed and energy expended. That is thermodynamics and it is not controversial. What the equation does not tell you is anything about health, and this is where most diet arguments actually live.

Two people can eat identical calories and have very different blood pressure, lipids, fibre intake, satiety, and adherence. Composition determines how easy the intake is to sustain, how full you feel, how your blood glucose behaves, and what your bloodwork looks like a year later. Calories explain the scale; everything else explains the rest.

What each macronutrient is actually for

Macronutrient	Energy	Useful daily range	What it does
Protein	4 kcal/g	0.8 g/kg minimum; 1.2–1.6 g/kg if active or losing weight	Supplies amino acids for tissue repair and muscle retention. The most satiating macronutrient per calorie, and the one that protects lean mass during a deficit.
Carbohydrate	4 kcal/g	Highly variable; the quality matters more than the quantity	The body’s most accessible fuel, and the main vehicle for fibre in most diets. Whole grains, legumes, fruit, and vegetables behave very differently from refined starch and sugar.
Fat	9 kcal/g	At least 20% of energy; saturated fat under 10%	Required for hormone production and for absorbing vitamins A, D, E, and K. Unsaturated sources — olive oil, nuts, oily fish — carry the favourable cardiovascular evidence.
Fibre	Minimal	25 g (women) / 38 g (men)	Feeds gut bacteria, slows glucose absorption, lowers LDL cholesterol, and adds volume without calories. Typical intake sits near half the target.
Alcohol	7 kcal/g	Less is better; no intake is the lowest-risk intake	Provides energy with no nutritional contribution, disrupts sleep architecture, and raises triglycerides. See our lifestyle hub and the BAC calculator.

Our macro calculator turns these ranges into specific gram targets using the Mifflin-St Jeor equation for your resting energy expenditure, then adjusts for activity and goal.

Fibre is the gap almost everyone has

If a single nutritional deficit deserves the attention that protein currently gets, it is fibre. Average intake in most Western countries sits around 15 grams a day against a target of 25 to 38. The shortfall matters because fibre does several unrelated useful things at once: soluble fibre binds bile acids and lowers LDL cholesterol, fermentable fibre feeds the gut microbiome, and bulk slows gastric emptying so meals stay satisfying for longer.

The practical routes to closing the gap are unglamorous: legumes several times a week, whole grains in place of refined, fruit eaten rather than juiced, and vegetables in volume. Increase intake gradually and with adequate fluid — a sudden jump from 15 to 35 grams reliably produces bloating and puts people off entirely.

The micronutrients people actually run short on

Most vitamins and minerals are covered by a varied diet. A short list comes up repeatedly in real deficiency data, and it is worth knowing which apply to you rather than taking a multivitamin as insurance against nothing in particular.

Nutrient	Adult reference intake	Who is most at risk
Vitamin D	600–800 IU (15–20 µg)	Anyone at higher latitudes in winter, people with darker skin, those who cover up or stay indoors. One of the few supplements with broad justification.
Iron	18 mg (women 19–50), 8 mg (men)	Menstruating women, pregnant women, endurance athletes, vegetarians. Do not supplement without a ferritin test — excess iron is harmful.
Vitamin B12	2.4 µg	Vegans and most vegetarians, adults over 60, long-term metformin or proton-pump inhibitor users. Supplementation is essentially mandatory on a vegan diet.
Iodine	150 µg (220 µg in pregnancy)	People avoiding iodised salt, dairy, and seafood. Intake has fallen as non-iodised speciality salts have become popular.
Calcium	1000 mg (1200 mg for women 51+)	People avoiding dairy without a fortified replacement; relevant to long-term bone density alongside resistance training.
Omega-3 (EPA/DHA)	250–500 mg	Anyone eating oily fish less than twice a week. Plant sources supply ALA, which converts to EPA and DHA inefficiently.
Folate	400 µg (600 µg in pregnancy)	Women who could become pregnant — supplementation before conception meaningfully reduces neural tube defect risk.

How the major eating patterns compare

Head-to-head trials consistently find that adherence predicts outcomes better than the specific pattern. Diets that people can actually keep to work; diets they abandon do not, regardless of mechanism. That said, the patterns differ in what they are best evidenced for.

Pattern	Strongest evidence for	The honest trade-off
Mediterranean	Cardiovascular outcomes — the deepest long-term evidence base of any dietary pattern.	Loosely defined and easy to misapply; olive oil and nuts are calorie-dense if portions go unchecked.
DASH	Lowering blood pressure, where its effect is large and quickly measurable.	Requires real attention to sodium, which mostly means cooking rather than buying prepared food.
Lower-carbohydrate	Short-term glycaemic control and triglycerides; useful in type 2 diabetes under supervision.	Long-term advantage over other patterns largely disappears once calories and protein are matched. Restrictive for many.
Plant-based	LDL cholesterol, fibre intake, and environmental footprint.	Needs deliberate planning for B12, iron, iodine, omega-3, and adequate protein.
Time-restricted eating	Simplicity — it reduces intake for some people without any counting.	Trials matching calories show little metabolic advantage from the timing itself. Poorly suited to anyone with a history of disordered eating.

Reading a label in ten seconds

Ignore the front of the package entirely — it is marketing, and terms like “natural”, “wellness”, and “immune support” carry no regulated meaning. Turn it over and check four things:

• Serving size first. Every other number on the panel depends on it, and manufacturers routinely set it smaller than anyone actually eats.
• Added sugars, not total sugars. The sugar in whole fruit and plain dairy comes packaged with fibre, water, and micronutrients; added sugar does not. Guidance puts the ceiling below 10% of daily energy.
• Fibre per 100 g. A genuinely wholegrain product usually clears 6 g per 100 g. Many “multigrain” and “wholemeal-style” products do not come close.
• Sodium. Most intake comes from processed and restaurant food rather than the salt shaker. The common ceiling is 2,300 mg per day, with the WHO recommending under 2,000 mg.

Supplements: the short list

The supplement industry is large because it is lightly regulated, not because most products work. A small number have credible evidence for specific situations: vitamin D where sun exposure is limited, B12 on a vegan diet, iron where deficiency is confirmed by testing, folate before and during early pregnancy, creatine monohydrate for strength training, and protein powder as a convenience when whole-food protein is impractical.

Tools for putting numbers on this

Common questions

Do I need to count calories to lose weight?

No, but you do need an energy deficit, and counting is simply one way to create one reliably. Others work as well for many people: raising protein and fibre so meals are more filling, reducing liquid calories, or controlling portion sizes by habit. Counting suits people who like data and badly suits anyone with a history of disordered eating.

Is eating late at night worse for you?

Timing has a much smaller effect than total intake. Late eating correlates with worse outcomes mostly because late eating tends to be extra, unplanned, and skewed toward snack foods rather than because of the clock. Large meals close to bedtime can worsen reflux and disrupt sleep, which is a real reason to shift them earlier.

Are carbohydrates making me gain weight?

Excess energy from any source drives fat gain. Carbohydrate is not uniquely fattening, though refined carbohydrate is easy to over-consume because it is low in fibre, quick to eat, and not very filling. Swapping refined sources for whole grains, legumes, and fruit usually reduces intake without any deliberate restriction.

How much water should I drink each day?

There is no evidence-backed universal number — the popular eight-glasses figure has no clinical origin. Requirements vary with body size, activity, climate, and how much water comes from food. Thirst is a reasonable guide for healthy adults, and pale straw-coloured urine suggests adequate hydration. Older adults have blunted thirst and should drink more deliberately.

Should I take a multivitamin as insurance?

For people eating a varied diet, trials have generally not shown meaningful benefit from routine multivitamins for chronic disease or mortality. Targeted supplementation for an identified gap — vitamin D in winter, B12 on a vegan diet, iron where deficiency is confirmed — has much better support than a broad-spectrum product taken speculatively.