Cutting to the chase, we will emphasize two major perspec-
tives from behavioral science. First, critical thinking isn’t just
about getting the nutrition facts right. Indeed, we argue that crit-
ical thinking has three dimensions: 1) Diligent Clarification (ie,
getting the facts right), 2) Logical Reasoning (ie, making appro-
priate inferences from facts and understanding tradeoffs), and
3) Humble Self-Reflection (ie, recognizing
uncertainty, both in science and in per-
sonal perceptions). Critical thinking can be
defined as “the objective analysis of facts
to form a judgment,” and all three dimen-
sions are needed to do that well.
The second major behavioral science
perspective is that the human mind evolved
for action and reaction, not for thinking
critically about nutrition. While human
cultures have built great critical think-
ing institutions such as science, the indi-
vidual human brain isn’t optimized for
critical thinking. Nobel Prize–winning
research (in economics) on human deci-
sion making has shown explicitly that
there are many ways in which we’re “wired” to take mental
shortcuts.1,2 An important implication is that we can’t start a
dialogue about nutrition with the expectation of critical think-
ing. Instead, we must expect failures and develop communi-
cation skills to inform people who aren’t inherently prepared
to think critically about nutrition.TABLE 1
Percentage of Respondents Ranking Each Item as the Most
Important Cause of Critical Thinking Failure59%
The media (including social media and celebrities) get in the
way of people’s ability to think critically.26%
The public has only minimal background knowledge of
nutrition and nutrition science.12% Education systems do not adequately teach critical thinking.
3% Human nature has limitations in critical thinking ability.
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