Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND

01/05/2026

says “seed oils are at the baseof the food pyramid”!?
That’s simply not true.

In the original USDA Food Pyramid, oils were placed at the very top with the instruction to“use sparingly.” That wasn’t specific to seed oils either. It referred to all oils, largely because of their caloric density.

As for grains, the 1990 Dietary Guidelines (which informed the original pyramid) explicitly emphasized whole grains. Even the visual itself shows darker breads and pasta, consistent with whole-grain foods.

But here’s the bigger issue: why are we even talking about the food pyramid? The original 1992 pyramid was replaced in 2005, then the latter iteration was retired in 2011. The U.S. hasn’t used a “food pyramid” in about 15 years. Needless to say, it’s irrelevant at this point.

On saturated fat, the science is actually quite settled. Saturated fats raise LDL-C, CVD risk, and all-cause mortality risk, especially when they replace polyunsaturated fats, like those found in seed oils. We also have tightly controlled feeding studies showing adverse effects on blood lipids, even when calories are matched.

However, I will give *some* credit for saying that olive and avocado oils (rich in monounsaturated fats) are healthier than saturated fats.

Ironically, when she describes what a “better” food guide should look like at the end, she’s basically describing USDA MyPlate, which is the current visual representation of dietary guidelines. So the proposed “fix” already exists, perhaps with some minor tweaks.

References:
https://iris.who.int/items/6802e083-7adf-4d67-91c6-8ec818e2fdbb
https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240061668
https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/about-dietary-guidelines/previous-editions/1990-dietary-guidelines-americans

01/03/2026

Seed oils aren’t toxic; bad nutrition takes are. The best available evidence (RCTs, prospective cohorts, and meta-analyses of both), consistently supports that replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fats (predominantly from seed oils) improves long-term health outcomes. So if an influencer that you follow states otherwise, RUN!

References:
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/cir.0000000000000510
https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240061668

01/02/2026

Did you know that both alcohol and raw milk can be dangerous?!
 
It is estimated that raw dairy products only make up about 1-3.5% of the dairy that’s consumed, so even if it were quite risky, it still only affects a small percentage of the population. As consumption becomes more widespread, it’ll affect more people. Even with such a tiny proportion of the population consuming raw dairy, it’s responsible for the *majority* of dairy-related foodborne illness outbreaks with the authors of one review estimating a 150x greater risk than pasteurized products.
 
In a more recent study in the USA, researchers estimated that raw products cause about 840x more illnesses and 45x more hospitalizations than pasteurized products.
 
And while she didn’t explicitly state that raw milk is safe, it’s the clear insinuation by her video, and it’s a ridiculous notion. Geophagy (the practice of eating soil/clay) also harms very few people each year… because very few people engage in the practice, but it can cause parasitic infections, potential heavy metal toxicity, intestinal obstruction/perforation, or death.
 
But using her reasoning, geophagy is A-okay because alcohol kills 2.6 million people per year. Makes a lot of sense…
 
References:
https://clf.jhsph.edu/publications/literature-review-risks-and-benefits-consuming-raw-and-pasteurized-cows-milk
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28518026/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35958861/
 

12/31/2025

That’s a wrap on 2025. What a year! 🎉

From my first (and dragging on stage to sing 🤣) to learning about Matcha and Okinawan cuisine in Japan with .oki and to seeing in their home country (and visiting and .daily.dose in Bondi while I was at it) to finally meeting and to appearing on the podcast and so much more!

Thanks for following a long over the past 365 days (and beyond), and I look forward to sharing so much more in 2026!

1st 📷:

12/29/2025

One reason that Aman Duggal (can’t tag) thinks that vegan diets are suboptimal is because we are discovering new nutrients in animal foods that may have certain therapeutic effects. To support this, he points to trans-vaccenic acid (TVA), which is a type of trans fat that can be found in certain animal foods like beef, and which he claims was discovered in 2023. Well, his own reference cites research from 1983 debunking his claim that it’s some newly discovered compound.
 
The paper he cited was also largely on animal and petri dish research and there are problems with extrapolating that to humans when consumed from foods like beef. First off, this type of research rarely actually translates to humans.
 
Further, the animal studies often used a dose of 1-2% of the weight of their diet from TVA. That would be like a human, consuming a 2000 calorie diet, taking ~20-40g of TVA per day. 100g of beef only provides ~1g, so you’d have to consume an absurd amount.

More importantly, red meats like beef aren’t just TVA. The TVA comes packaged with things like saturated fat, cholesterol, and heme iron, and regularly consuming that whole package actually increases risk of certain cancers. In fact, his own reference says as much! They suggest that their research points toward *potential* benefits of consuming isolated TVA as a supplement in certain cases, rather than consuming large amounts of red meat, because the latter can increase risk!
 
We ultimately need to look at the net effect of the food (or ‘whole package’). I could just as easily pick out the fact that Krispy Kreme donuts have fibre, and then go on to promote them as a health food. However, the amount of fibre is tiny, and it comes packaged with a whole bunch of stuff that makes donuts not such a healthy thing to consume daily.
 
His reference:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06749-3
Additional references:
PMIDs 6356151, 29394327, 38870090, 34455534, 22332075, 15671225

12/27/2025

‼️ NEW PUBLICATION ‼️

Can plant-based diets supply adequate choline? David Goldman and I just published this review on the topic in Academia Nutrition and Dietetics!

We cover:
- The current choline intake recommendations.
- Prevalence of choline deficiency.
- Plant-based sources of choline.
- How plant and animal-based choline sources impact long-term health outcomes.
- When supplementation should be considered.

Read the full paper here (also linked in my bio): https://www.academia.edu/3067-1345/2/4/10.20935/AcadNutr8085

12/26/2025

I have just published a new review on choline in plant-based diets with co-author, David Goldman!

We cover:
- The current choline intake recommendations.
- Prevalence of choline deficiency.
- Plant-based sources of choline.
- How plant and animal-based choline sources impact long-term health outcomes.
- When supplementation should be considered.

Read the full review here: https://www.academia.edu/3067-1345/2/4/10.20935/AcadNutr8085

© 2025 copyright by the authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

12/26/2025

Vegans have a lower risk of ischemic heart disease and cancer based on meta-analyses of prospective cohort studies, so I have no idea what carnivore, Anthony Chaffee is on about. Mind you, he didn’t seem to be at all familiar with the data in my debate with him and has even admitted to not caring about studies... so, I guess he just likes to make stuff up?

References:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9899747/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26853923/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37264855/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34455534/

12/24/2025

So Aman Duggal (can’t tag) *tried* to respond to my video on creatine… but didn’t do too well.

He’s still holding onto this idea that vegetarians are deficient in creatine based on the fact that they performed better on a single memory test compared to meat eaters, after creatine supplementation. However, there are several issues with that interpretation. For starters, it was just a single finding out of many tests they ran, so it could be a chance finding. Also, they didn’t perform any worse than meat eaters without supplementation, these results have not been repeated in a subsequent trial, and vegetarians have been found to have similar brain creatine levels to meat eaters, further casting doubt on this proposed effect. These concerns have also been raised by other publications.

He’s also using a proprietary definition of “deficiency.” By his standard, if you take regular coffee drinks and noncoffee drinkers and give them all caffeine supplements, the noncoffee drinkers would have a notable improvement in cognitive function, whereas the coffee drinkers may see a smaller effect, depending on the dose. Does that mean that people who don’t regularly consume coffee are “caffeine deficient” since they responded positively to caffeine supplementation? That’s where his logic leads.

References:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21118604/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24290771/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33578876/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16910172/

12/22/2025

Literally all these foods are healthy or can be healthy depending on what they’re made of…

References:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39001794/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31667860/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22741167/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23701754/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27916819/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33260594/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38934982/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33762150/
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/cir.0000000000000510
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41327897/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27301975/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34977959/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28446499/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29889581/

12/19/2025

This one was going so well…until he got to cognitive function. I asked for his sources because his claim is quite contradictory to this meta-analysis of RCTs in which soy isoflavones (‘phytoestrogens’) improved cognitive function and memory…and every single RCT that was included suggested either neutral or beneficial effects.
 
He responded and pointed out that the trials were looking at isoflavones (either through supplements or various soy products), rather than tofu, specifically, which I guess is fair if he’s speculating that there’s some other component of tofu that is leading to these outcomes. He also pointed me to where I could find his references, so I checked them out.
 
He cited 3 relatively small cross-sectional studies. These are studies where you look at a single snapshot in time and find out how much tofu people currently consume and how they score on cognitive tests. However, this is generally considered low quality evidence, in part because you often don’t know how long people have eaten that way. Funny enough, his third reference re-analyzed a population that was studied in his second reference, and found that tofu was no longer associated with with worse memory function, while tempeh was associated with improved outcomes.
 
I pointed out the issue with cross-sectional studies and cited a meta-analysis of cohort studies, which actually follow people over time. They found that there were no significant associations between tofu intake and major neurocognitive disorders or cognitive impairment. Thus, stronger research on the topic does not support the idea that tofu consumption negatively impacts memory or cognitive function, while also coming with a host of health benefits, some of which he mentioned in his original video.
 
His References:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25114086/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18583909/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21035431/
My References:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31504836/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40917087/