7 Little Nutrition Facts That Completely Changed the Way RDs Think About Food

In theory, feeding yourself should be one of the easiest things in the world, but in practice, it’s not always that straightforward. In a climate rife with conspiracy theories and baseless (and sometimes dangerous) social media trends, the line between true and false, substantiated and shady, can seem increasingly blurry—at least on the surface.

If you’re not an expert, the constant onslaught of new information can be tough to parse (not to mention overwhelming), so we asked a bunch of registered dietitians to share the top overarching revelations that altered how they thought about nutrition. We’re not talking about the latest buzzy science news or fads, but firm, foundational tenets that have endured (and will continue to do so). Here’s everything they said—and how you can use their insights to bolster your own relationship with food. When misinformation threatens to drown everything else out, these truths can help cut through the noise, serving as a guiding light that helps ground your everyday eating decisions.

1. You’re eating for your brain, not just your body.

You might think of your diet as a tool shaping the way your body looks and acts, but this interpretation overlooks a major piece of the puzzle. Whenever you tuck into a snack or meal, you’re fueling your brain as well as your body, Amber Young, MS, RDN, founder of the North Carolina–based practice Redefined Nutrition, tells SELF. Even though your brain only makes up 2% of your total body weight, it accounts for around a fifth of your total energy requirements—needs that also have to be fulfilled by the food you eat, according to Young. Specifically, “your brain needs around 120 to 130 grams of carbohydrates per day to function optimally,” she says. While this often falls by the wayside in conversations about nutrition that focus only on, say, protein’s muscle-building potential, it makes it all the more important to maintain healthy habits like eating regularly and taking in a balance of nutrients.

2. “Whole” and “home-cooked” isn’t always possible—or automatically the best.

Early on in her career, Vincci Tsui, RD, a certified intuitive eating counselor based in Canada, would recommend that her clients eat whole foods or cook more at home so they had more control over the content of their meals, as she tells SELF. While that advice wasn’t bad, she soon realized that many of her clients weren’t able to put it into practice, whether due to time limitations, financial constraints, a lack of cooking skill, personal preference, or other reasons. People tend to “put pressure on themselves to be cooking from scratch,” Tsui says. As a result, folks can experience feelings of inadequacy and even guilt when they fail to meet those lofty expectations.

What’s more, Tsui also became increasingly aware that the link between such “healthy” eating habits and better health isn’t as clear-cut as it seems. “Most nutrition research is observational, meaning that we can only determine correlations, not causation,” she says. “Even though eating more whole foods or home-cooked meals may correlate with better health outcomes, we don’t know that food is the cause. It might just be that these eating patterns are just a reflection of higher socioeconomic status, better access, and more privilege.” Developing this awareness helped Tsui “bring more compassion and flexibility” to her nutrition counseling—taking limiting factors like time and resources into account, and meeting clients where they’re at rather than where they would be in an ideal world. Now, she’ll often “push back on that misconception that whole foods or less processed foods are automatically ‘better’” when she encounters it in her practice. To the contrary, ultraprocessed foods certainly can be a solid option—which is why SELF decided to include them in our 2025 Pantry Awards.

3. Being thin isn’t the same as being healthy.

While weight and BMI have traditionally been construed as a measure of how healthy you are, more recent research suggests that the correlation is actually deeply flawed in several ways. Not only can dieting and weight-cycling cause psychological harm “by promoting a rigid, judgment-based approach to food and eating,” Thanh Thanh Nguyen, MS, RDN, a registered dietitian at Mendinground Nutrition, tells SELF, they may even have negative effects on physical health, too. When Nguyen started digging, she came across a bunch of research that really helped cement her weight-inclusive approach to her own practice, including a 2012 study published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine that found adopting healthy lifestyle habits was associated with a significantly lowered risk of premature death regardless of BMI; a 2014 review published in the Journal of Obesity that concluded a weight-inclusive approach was safer for patients and more sustainable over time; and a 2019 article published in the journal Women & Therapy that argued against sizeism and for a weight-inclusive approach to wellness. Reading the research, Nguyen felt so validated. Today, this information helps her support clients who feel like they need to lose weight by any means necessary to improve their health—and challenge that entrenched belief. Rather than focusing on the number on the scale, she’ll redirect their efforts toward lifestyle shifts under their control, like adding in movement and eating regularly.

4. Snacking isn’t bad for you—it can actually have a ton of health benefits.

Denying yourself food when you’re hungry outside of normal mealtimes is actually the harmful habit, according to Young. Even though the division of the day into breakfast, lunch, and dinner might lead you to believe that you should only eat at those set intervals, eating consistently (and in adequate amounts) throughout the day is “really helpful all around” for our health, Young says. “Some of my clients might describe something like a brain fog that sets in when they’re not eating enough or they’re low on carbohydrates,” she adds. If that sounds like you, trying to eat every three to four hours may help keep your mood, focus, appetite, and energy levels stable. Without sufficient food, not only can the hanger rush in, but you’ll also miss out on opportunities to make other changes to your diet, like tweaking the macro balance or incorporating a wider array of micronutrients.

5. Implementing healthy habits slowly works better than making big, sweeping changes all at once.

When you’re considering a nutrition change, your first impulse is probably to go big. “Oftentimes, the instinct is to overhaul or 180-degree our entire diet overnight,” Young says. Tempting as it might be to do a radical about-face, however, try to resist that urge: Those kinds of sudden, dramatic shifts aren’t sustainable in the long term and will only make you feel like you’ve failed. “It leads to overwhelm and shutdown, and it’s really easy to get discouraged,” Young says. Instead, try making smaller tweaks to your diet and lifestyle, and scaling up from there. You might not notice as big of a difference, but on the flip side, you’ll be more likely to stick with your new regimen. Some little ways to eat just a little healthier: build in a mid-afternoon snack if you often go long stretches without eating, focus on what you can add to your plate rather than subtract (tossing a handful of chickpeas into a smoothie, for instance), or buying pre-washed or pre-chopped produce to get more veggies throughout the day.

6. Don’t let fiber fall by the wayside.

Among the big nutrition convos of the day (protein! Food dyes!), fiber often gets lost in the shuffle. Despite its critical role in keeping your gut happy and healthy, and helping you poop on the regular, most people—more than 90% of the population, according to some estimates—don’t take in nearly enough. In fact, the estimated average daily intake—16 grams—is around half of the recommended 25 (for women) and 38 (for men), according to the National Library of Medicine. If you, too, find it hard to pack an adequate amount of fiber into your diet, consider taking a pragmatic approach to the problem—“thinking about how to get the best bang for your buck,” Anthea Levi, MS, RD, CDN, a Brooklyn-based health writer and founder of Alive+Well Nutrition, tells SELF. Plant-based foods as a whole tend to be high in fiber, she explains, but some are still “way better sources” than others, so make a conscious effort to prioritize those that are especially dense in the nutrient. “One cup of fresh spinach has less than one gram of fiber in it, whereas one tablespoon of chia seeds has four or five grams of fiber in it,” for example, Levi says. Other fiber-rich foods include lima beans, green peas, raspberries, and shredded wheat cereal. By leaning on those, it’ll be “easier for us to hit our [fiber] goals,” Levi says. That’s big, because the benefits of fiber can affect your whole body; getting enough can lower your risk for colon cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other serious health conditions (and even premature death).

7. That said, nutrition information shouldn’t be your sole consideration in deciding what to eat.

Yes, we know we just said that fiber content is important (and it is!), but at the same time, don’t let factors like that completely drown out your other needs. When the exact nutritional breakdown of any product is right there on the packaging, it can be easy to base your eating decisions on calories, macros, or some other nutritional component alone, rather than considering what would truly satisfy you in the moment, Janice Dada, MPH, RDN, a certified intuitive eating counselor based in California, tells SELF. If you see your choice contains more calories or less protein than you expected, for example, you might then second-guess your selection, feeling stressed, anxious, or pressured into opting for a less-fulfilling alternative. Then, you run the risk of “ending up unsatisfied at the end and still searching for food,” Dada says.

Instead, she suggests viewing nutrition info through a neutral rather than a negative lens—treating it not as a critique of your personal dietary choices, but as a helpful guide to maximizing your satisfaction (like knowing what you need to contribute to a snack or meal in order to balance it out or beef it up). Food is more than its nutritional makeup, after all; it can also be a source of joy, camaraderie, cultural connection, and more, and you risk missing out on those non-tangible benefits if you only see what you’re eating as the sum of its parts.

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