Appendix I — Glossary

Terms as this book uses them, with the chapter that argues each one.

⚠️ Where a term is contested or is used loosely elsewhere, the entry says so. ⚠️ Several of the most-used words in nutrition — "processed," "natural," "clean," "detox," "superfood" — are marked because their looseness is doing work for somebody.

A

⚠️ Added sugar — ⚠️ Sugars added during processing or preparation, plus those in syrups, honey and juice concentrates. ⚠️ Distinct from sugars intrinsic to whole fruit and milk, and the distinction is defensible: it tracks the food matrix rather than the molecule. (Ch 18)

Adequate Intake (AI) — ⚠️ A reference value used when evidence is too weak to set an RDA. An informed estimate. (App A)

⚠️ Adherence — ⚠️ Whether a person actually follows a dietary pattern over time. ⚠️ Chapter 10's threshold: it beats composition, and the best diet is the one you'll actually eat. (Ch 10)

Amino acids, essential — ⚠️ The nine the body cannot synthesize. (Ch 8)

⚠️ Anaphylaxis — ⚠️ A rapid, potentially fatal allergic reaction. A medical emergency requiring adrenaline. (Ch 28)

ARFID — ⚠️ Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. Restriction driven by sensory factors, fear of aversive consequences, or low interest — WITHOUT a body-image component. (Ch 34)

⚠️ Atypical anorexia nervosa — ⚠️ All features of anorexia nervosa except a low weight. ⚠️ Not atypical, not milder, and the name is an artefact of a diagnostic system built around weight. (Ch 34)

B

Bioavailability — ⚠️ The proportion of an ingested nutrient actually absorbed and usable. ⚠️ Why non-haem iron and haem iron are not interchangeable. (Ch 14)

Binge eating disorder — ⚠️ Recurrent episodes of eating experienced as out of control, with marked distress, without regular compensatory behaviour. ⚠️ The most common eating disorder. (Ch 34)

C

⚠️ CGM (continuous glucose monitor) — ⚠️ Established care in diabetes. In people without diabetes, 🟡 — real educational value briefly, no outcome evidence, and severe interpretation risks. (Ch 35)

⚠️ "Clean eating" — ⚠️ No regulated or agreed meaning. A values position in a scientific costume, and the presentation the culture most actively supplies. (Ch 20, Ch 34 §34.9)

Coeliac disease — ⚠️ An autoimmune condition triggered by gluten. ⚠️ TEST BEFORE REMOVING GLUTEN — diagnosis requires gluten in the diet. (Ch 28)

Confounding — ⚠️ When a third factor explains an observed association. ⚠️ The permanent problem of nutritional epidemiology. (Ch 2)

⚠️ Convergence — ⚠️ Independent lines of evidence arriving at the same conclusion. ⚠️ Chapter 37's central structural argument, resting on Chapter 35 §35.10 and Chapter 36 §36.9. (Ch 37)

D

⚠️ "Detox" — ⚠️ ❌ throughout. The liver and kidneys do this; no commercial product improves on them. (Ch 17)

DiRECT — ⚠️ A named trial showing a dose–response relationship between weight loss and type 2 diabetes remission. (Ch 26)

Disinhibition — ⚠️ A breach of restraint, typically cue- or stress-triggered. Step 4 of Chapter 33's cycle. (Ch 33)

E

⚠️ EAR (Estimated Average Requirement) — ⚠️ The amount meeting the needs of half a population. The scientifically central figure, and the one nobody quotes. (App A)

⚠️ Energy availability — ⚠️ Energy intake minus exercise energy expenditure, relative to fat-free mass. ⚠️ Low energy availability underlies RED-S. (Ch 15, 23, 34)

Energy density — ⚠️ Calories per unit weight, usually kcal/100 g. Printed on European labels and one of the most useful numbers there. (Ch 22, 30)

⚠️ Externalities — ⚠️ Costs of producing food that are real, are paid, and do not appear on the receipt — emissions, land, water, health, labour. (Ch 36)

F

Fibre — ⚠️ Carbohydrate not digested in the small intestine. ⚠️ Chapter 11 calls it the book's largest evidence-to-attention gap. (Ch 11)

FODMAPs — ⚠️ Fermentable carbohydrates implicated in IBS symptoms. ⚠️ The low-FODMAP protocol has THREE phases and the reintroduction phase is the one commercial programmes omit. (Ch 27, 28)

Food insecurity — ⚠️ Limited or uncertain access to adequate food. ⚠️ A risk factor for disordered eating, and it runs the same restriction cycle without anyone calling it a diet. (Ch 32, 34)

⚠️ Food matrix — ⚠️ The physical structure of a food, which changes how its nutrients behave. ⚠️ Why whole fruit and fruit juice differ despite similar sugars. (Ch 18, 22)

G

Ghrelin — ⚠️ A hormone initiating eating, which rises before expected meals and is trainable by schedule. (Ch 21, 33)

Glycaemic index — ⚠️ A population average of postprandial glucose response. ⚠️ Chapter 35 showed how much individual variation that average conceals. (Ch 7, 35)

⚠️ Group 4 / NOVA — ⚠️ The ultra-processed category in the NOVA classification. ⚠️ The system has real definitional problems and the ward-trial finding is real. Both. (Ch 22)

H

⚠️ Healthy-user bias — ⚠️ People who do the healthy thing differ from those who don't in many other ways. ⚠️ Chapter 2's threshold, and the reason most nutrition headlines are wrong. (Ch 2)

Hedonic hunger — ⚠️ Eating driven by reward, cue and palatability rather than energy need. ⚠️ Half of Chapter 33's threshold. (Ch 33)

Homeostatic hunger — ⚠️ Eating driven by the body's energy-regulation system. (Ch 33)

I–L

⚠️ IgG food sensitivity panels — ⚠️ ❌ Not supported. IgG indicates exposure, not intolerance. (Ch 28, 35)

Implementation intention — ⚠️ "When X happens, I will do Y." 🟢, and exactly what the bad-night plan is. (Ch 31, 33)

Leptin — ⚠️ A hormone signalling adequacy of fat stores. Falls with weight loss and stays low. (Ch 24, 33)

Liking — ⚠️ The hedonic pleasure of consumption. Distinct from WANTING, and much more stable. (Ch 33)

M–N

Metabolic adaptation — ⚠️ Reduced energy expenditure with weight loss. Real, and measured in hundreds of calories rather than thousands. (Ch 5)

Minnesota Starvation Experiment — ⚠️ Keys, 1944–45. Semi-starvation in screened healthy men produced obsessive food preoccupation, ritual, low mood and loss of fullness signalling. ⚠️ The behaviours were produced by the restriction, not revealed by it. (Ch 33, 34)

⚠️ "Natural" — ⚠️ Not a regulated term in most jurisdictions. Tells you nothing. (Ch 20, 30)

NCGS — ⚠️ Non-coeliac gluten sensitivity. Real, distinct from coeliac disease, and fructans may explain a substantial share of it. (Ch 28)

NEAT — ⚠️ Non-exercise activity thermogenesis. Varies enormously and responds to intake. (Ch 5)

n-of-1 — ⚠️ A personal experiment. 🟢 for short-latency measurable questions; ❌ for anything taking years. (Ch 35)

O–P

Orthorexia — ⚠️ Preoccupation with the healthfulness rather than quantity of food. ⚠️ Not a formal diagnosis; ⚗️ under-tested as a distinct entity; names something real that frequently meets criteria for OSFED or ARFID. (Ch 34)

OSFED — ⚠️ Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder. ⚠️ Not a mild category — outcomes are comparable to the named disorders, and the name misleads badly. (Ch 34)

⚠️ Over-extension — ⚠️ A real finding pushed past what it showed. ⚠️ Chapter 17's finding: the commonest shape of a retired myth, and it is not fabrication. (Ch 17)

Postprandial — After a meal. (Ch 35)

Q–R

QUID — ⚠️ Quantitative Ingredient Declaration. A named, pictured or emphasized ingredient must have its percentage declared (EU/UK). ⚠️ One of the most useful things on a label. (Ch 30)

RDA / RNI — ⚠️ A reference value set to cover ~97% of healthy people. ⚠️ Deliberately above what most people need — so intake below it is not a deficiency. (App A, Ch 13)

RED-S — ⚠️ Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport. Affects all sexes at every level and does NOT require a low body weight. (Ch 34)

Refeeding syndrome — ⚠️ Potentially fatal electrolyte and fluid shifts on reintroducing nutrition after substantial undernutrition. ⚠️ One of only two places in this book where following general nutrition advice could kill someone. (Ch 29, 34)

⚠️ Reformulation — ⚠️ Changing a product's composition, usually in response to regulation or a levy. ⚠️ Genuinely works for the targeted nutrient AND does not address Chapter 22's finding. (Ch 36)

Restraint theory — ⚠️ The literature linking cognitive restriction to preoccupation and disinhibition. (Ch 33)

S

Satiation — ⚠️ What ends the current meal. Satiety — ⚠️ What delays the next one. ⚠️ Conflating them is why "filling food" advice often doesn't last. (Ch 33)

Sensory-specific satiety — ⚠️ Tiring of the food being eaten but not of a different food. ⚠️ Explains dessert, and buffets. (Ch 33)

Substitution rule — ⚠️ The health effect of removing a food depends on what replaces it. ⚠️ Chapter 9's central move, and it applies throughout. (Ch 9)

⚠️ "Superfood" — ⚠️ A marketing category with no scientific definition. (Ch 17)

Survivorship bias — ⚠️ Drawing conclusions from what remained without accounting for what did not. ⚠️ Chapter 37 §37.2b concedes this applies to its own historical argument. (Ch 24, 37)

T–Z

⚠️ Threshold concept — ⚠️ An idea that changes what everything else means. This book has twelve, listed in Chapter 38 §38.5b.

Triangulation — ⚠️ Support from methods with different weaknesses. ⚠️ Chapter 37's argument, and it explicitly claims only PARTIAL independence. (Ch 37)

⚠️ Ultra-processed food — ⚠️ See Group 4. ⚠️ The mechanism appears to be matrix, energy density and displacement rather than "chemicals" — and Chapter 37 §37.9 names this as a place the book may be overconfident. (Ch 22)

⚠️ Wanting — ⚠️ Motivation to obtain. Dopaminergic, cue-triggered, and DISSOCIABLE from liking. ⚠️ "I didn't even enjoy it" is accurate introspection about two systems. (Ch 33)

⚠️ Six words to be careful with

⚠️ And Chapter 34 §34.11 lists the words to retire when talking about eating: "cheat meal," "earning" food, "burning it off," "being good," "guilt-free" — and any comment on anyone's body, including a favourable one.