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According to a new study by the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina, 40 years of the NHANES American nutrition research funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be completely invalid.

The reason for this, the researchers say, is because the method used to collect the nutrition data is seriously flawed. According to the study’s lead author, exercise scientist and epidemiologist Edward Archer:

“These results suggest that without valid population-level data, speculations regarding the role of energy intake in the rise in the prevalence of obesity are without empirical support.”

It’s no secret that childhood obesity has become a lethal epidemic in the US and many other parts of the world. The trend is so serious, some food advocates, like British chef Jamie Oliver, are taking more “dramatic” measures to inspire a collective and cultural U-turn.

Above is the first episode of Oliver’s TV show Food Revolution, which began airing in 2010. A major part of the problem, which Oliver addresses head-on, is that our food culture has changed so drastically over the last 30 years that a majority of today’s youth do not know what fresh, whole food is.

They don’t know where food comes from, or what the food they do eat is made of. Even many adults are at a loss when it comes to understanding the difference between synthetic chemicals added to foods during processing, and bioavailable nutrients found in unprocessed foods.