Medicine Grand Rounds: Nutrition Debate

When:
January 16, 2019 @ 8:00 am – 9:00 am
2019-01-16T08:00:00-08:00
2019-01-16T09:00:00-08:00
Where:
Alway M106
Cooper Lane
Palo Alto
CA 94304
Cost:
Free
Contact:
Talia Ochoa
Medicine Grand Rounds: Nutrition Debate @ Alway M106 | Palo Alto | California | United States

Presenters:   Christopher Gardner, PhD and John Ioannidis, MD 

Gardner:

Rehnborg Farquhar Professor of Medicine, Stanford Prevention Research Center

Ionannidis:

C.F. Rehnborg Chair in Disease Prevention, Professor of Medicine, Professor of Health Research and Policy, and Professor (by courtesy) of Biomedical Data Science at the School of Medicine

Stanford University

Gardner:

For the past 20 years most of my research has been focused on investigating the potential health benefits of various dietary components or food patterns, which have been explored in the context of randomized controlled trials in free-living adult populations. Some of the interventions have involved vegetarian diets, soy foods and soy food components, garlic, omega-3 fats/fish oil/flax oil, antioxidants, Ginkgo biloba, and popular weight loss diets. These trials have ranged in duration from 8 weeks to a year, with study outcomes that have included weight, blood lipids and lipoproteins, inflammatory markers, glucose, insulin, blood pressure and body composition. Most of these trials have been NIH-funded. The most recent of these was an NIH funded weight loss diet study – DIETFITS (Diet Intervention Examining The Factors Interacting with Treatment Success) that involved randomizing 609 generally healthy, overweight/obese adults for one year to either a Healthy Low-Fat or a Healthy Low-Carb diet. The main findings were published in JAMA in 2018, and many secondary and exploratory analyses are in progress testing and generating follow-up hypotheses.

In the past few years the long-term interests of my research group have shifted to include two additional areas of inquiry. One of these is Stealth Nutrition. The central hypothesis driving this is that in order for more effective and impactful dietary improvements to be realized, public health professionals need to consider adding non-health related approaches to their strategies toolbox. Examples would be the connections between food and 1) global warming and climate change, 2) animal rights and welfare, and 3) human labor abuses (e.g., slaughterhouses, agriculture fields, fast food restaurants). An example of my ongoing research in this area is a summer Food and Farm Camp run in collaboration with the Santa Clara Unified School District since 2011. Every year ~125 kids between the ages of 5-14 years come for 1-week summer camp sessions led by Stanford undergraduates and an Education Director to tend, harvest, chop, cook, and eat vegetables…and play because it is summer camp! The objective is to study the factors influencing the behaviors and preferences that lead to maximizing vegetable consumption in kids.

A second area of interest and inquiry is institutional food. Universities, worksites, hospitals, and schools order and serve a lot of food, every day. If the choices offered are healthier, the consumption behaviors will be healthier. A key factor to success in institutional food is to make the food options to “unapologetically delicious” a term I borrow from Greg Drescher, a colleague and friend at the Culinary Institute of America (the other CIA). Chefs are trained to make great tasting food, and chefs in institutional food settings can be part of the solution to improving eating behaviors. In 2015 I helped to initiate a Stanford-CIA collaboration that now involves dozens of universities that have agreed to collectively use their dining halls as living laboratories to study ways to maximize the synergy of taste, health and environmental sustainability. If universities, worksites, hospitals and schools change the foods they serve, they will change the foods they order, and that kind of institutional demand can change agricultural practices – a systems-level approach to achieving healthier dietary behaviors.

My long-term vision in this area is to help create a world-class Stanford Food Systems Initiative and build on the idea that Stanford is uniquely positioned geographically, culturally, and academically, to address national and global crises in the areas of obesity and diabetes that are directly related to our broken food systems.

Ioannidis:

C.F. Rehnborg Chair in Disease Prevention at Stanford University, Professor of Medicine, Professor of Health Research and Policy, and Professor (by courtesy) of Biomedical Data Science at the School of Medicine; Professor (by courtesy) of Statistics at the School of Humanities and Sciences; co-Director, Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford; Director of the PhD program in Epidemiology and Clinical Research.
Born in New York City in 1965 and raised in Athens, Greece. Valedictorian (1984) at Athens College; National Award of the Greek Mathematical Society (1984); MD (top rank of medical school class) from the National University of Athens in 1990; also received DSc in biopathology from the same institution. Trained at Harvard and Tufts (internal medicine and infectious diseases), then held positions at NIH, Johns Hopkins and Tufts. Chaired the Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, University of Ioannina Medical School in 1999-2010 (tenured professor since 2003) while also holding adjunct professor positions at Harvard School of Public Health, Tufts, and Imperial College. Senior Advisor on Knowledge Integration at NCI/NIH (2012-6). Served as President, Society for Research Synthesis Methodology, and editorial board member of many leading journals (including PLoS Medicine, Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine, JNCI, Science Translational Medicine, Clinical Chemistry, Molecular and Cellular Proteomics, AIDS, IJE, JCE, Clinical Trials, and PLoS ONE, among others) and as Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Clinical Investigation (2010-now). Delivered ~500 invited and honorary lectures. Recipient of many awards (e.g. European Award for Excellence in Clinical Science [2007], Medal for Distinguished Service, Teachers College, Columbia University [2015], Chanchlani Global Health Award [2017], Epiphany Science Courage Award [2018], Einstein fellow [2018]). Inducted in the Association of American Physicians (2009), European Academy of Cancer Sciences (2010) American Epidemiological Society (2015), European Academy of Sciences and Arts (2015), National Academy of Medicine (2018). Honorary titles from FORTH (2014) and Ioannina (2015) and honorary doctorates from Rotterdam (2015) and Athens (2017). Multiple honorary lectureships/visiting professorships (Caltech, Oxford, LSHTM, Yale, U Utah, U Conn, UC Davis, U Penn among others). The PLoS Medicine paper on “Why most published research findings are false” has been the most-accessed article in the history of Public Library of Science (>2.5 million hits). Author of 7 literary books in Greek, two of which (“Toccata for the Girl with the Burnt Face” (Kedros 2012) and “Variations on the Art of the Fugue and a Desperate Ricercar” (Kedros 2014)) were shortlisted for best book of the year Anagnostis awards. Brave Thinker scientist for 2010 according to Atlantic, “may be one of the most influential scientists alive”. Highly Cited Researcher according to Thomson Reuters in both Clinical Medicine and in Social Sciences. Citation indices: h=173, m=7 per Google Scholar (h=139 per WoS and Scopus). Current citation rates: >3,000 new citations per month per Google Scholar, >1,500 new citations per month per Scopus or Web of Knowledge.
Current citation rates suggest that I am among the 10 scientists worldwide who are currently the most commonly cited, perhaps also the currently most-cited physician. This probably only proves that citation metrics are highly unreliable, since I estimate that I have been rejected over 1,000 times in my life. Regardless, I consider myself privileged to have learned and to continue to learn from interactions with students and young scientists (of all ages) from all over the world and I love to be constantly reminded that I know next to nothing.