ArticleAdvances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.)2018
Perspective: Are Large, Simple Trials the Solution for Nutrition Research?
Article in Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.), 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers, 9 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed, 9 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Completion Rates of Food Frequency Questionnaires and Food Records in People with Chronic Conditions: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Nutrients · 2026Pooled it
- Evaluating agreement between individual nutrition randomised controlled trials and cohort studies - a meta-epidemiological study.BMC medicine · 2025Pooled it
- The Role of Diet in the Prevention of Hypertension and Management of Blood Pressure: An Umbrella Review of Meta-Analyses of Interventional and Observational Studies.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2024Pooled it
- Ultra-processed foods consumption and health-related outcomes: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials.Frontiers in nutrition · 2024Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Evaluation of the Quality of Evidence of the Association of Foods and Nutrients With Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes: A Systematic Review.JAMA network open · 2022Pooled it
- An umbrella review of the evidence associating diet and cancer risk at 11 anatomical sites.Nature communications · 2021Pooled it
- n-3 Fatty Acid Biomarkers and Incident Type 2 Diabetes: An Individual Participant-Level Pooling Project of 20 Prospective Cohort Studies.Diabetes care · 2021Pooled it
- Yogurt, cultured fermented milk, and health: a systematic review.Nutrition reviews · 2021Pooled it
- The risk associated with ultra-processed food intake on depressive symptoms and mental health in older adults: a target trial emulation.BMC medicine · 2025Trial
- Factors associated with successful dietary changes in an energy-reduced Mediterranean diet intervention: a longitudinal analysis in the PREDIMED-Plus trial.European journal of nutrition · 2022Trial
- Integration of food and nutrition into oncology care: Proceedings of the Food is Medicine in Oncology Care Symposium.Cancer · 2026Article
- Fueling Soccer Players: A Scoping Review and Audit of Literature Related to Soccer-Specific Guidelines for Carbohydrate Intake.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2025Article
- Vegetarian dietary patterns and cardiovascular risk factors and disease prevention: An umbrella review of systematic reviews.American journal of preventive cardiology · 2024Review
- Navigating grey areas in HIV and mental health implementation science.Journal of the International AIDS Society · 2024Article
- The effect of free school fruit on academic performance: a nationwide quasi-experiment.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Perspective: Early-Life Nutrition Research Supported by the US National Institutes of Health from 2018 to 2020.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2022Article
- Testing the protein-leverage hypothesis using population surveillance data.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Update on Plant-Based Diets and Cardiometabolic Risk.Current atherosclerosis reports · 2022Review
- Evaluating Concordance of Bodies of Evidence from Randomized Controlled Trials, Dietary Intake, and Biomarkers of Intake in Cohort Studies: A Meta-Epidemiological Study.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Nutritional research and policies have been criticized for relying on observational evidence, using self-report diet assessment methods, and supposedly being unable to present a consensus on what constitutes a healthy diet. In particular, it is often asserted that for progress to occur in nutrition science, large, simple trials, which have worked well in evaluating the efficacy of drugs, need to replace most observational research and small trials in nutrition. However, this idea is infeasible, and is unlikely to advance nutritional sciences or improve policies. This article addresses some commonly held and unfounded "myths" surrounding dietary assessments, effect sizes, and confounding, demonstrating how carefully conducted observational studies can provide reliable and reproducible evidence on diet and health. Also, there is a strong consensus among nutritional researchers and practitioners about the basic elements of a healthy diet. To move forward, we should continue to improve study design and diet assessment methodologies, reduce measurement errors, and leverage new technologies. Advances in the field lie in coalescing evidence from multiple study designs, methodologies, and technologies, and translating what we already know into policy and practice, so we can improve diet quality and enhance health in an equitable and sustainable manner across the world.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.