Editorial policy
The rules every page here is checked against before it publishes.
Every page is checked against the rules below before publication and rewritten if it fails. They exist because nutrition is a subject where a confident number is easy to write, pleasant to read, and wrong in a way the reader cannot detect for months.
What gets a page rejected
A figure published without its uncertainty. A rate of weight loss presented as achievable or typical. Any plan below the calorie floor. A named diet described as superior to another. A supplement, product or brand recommended. A claim that a food burns calories, boosts metabolism, or detoxifies anything.
An invented statistic, or a study that cannot be named. A mechanism stated as settled when the literature is divided — meal timing and frequency most of all, where the effect sizes are small and the confident writing is abundant.
What every figure must carry
The equation or source it came from, the population it was fitted to, and the error attached to it. Where a figure is a simplification — 7,700 calories per kilogram is the obvious one — the page says what it simplifies and in which direction it is wrong.
Corrections
An error in a calculation is corrected on the page, and the page says what was wrong and when it changed. A figure that turned out to rest on an assumption the page did not state is treated as an error rather than a detail.