Annemarie Colbin, PhD, CHES, founder of The Natural Gourmet Cookery School/Institute for Food and Health in New York City, which offers career programs and public classes in health-supportive cooking and the 

relationship between food and health.

    Why we need an expressed theoretical framework?

Because we don’t have one!  In order to ascertain the value of any dietary system, we need two things: the theoretical frame-work and the  scientific data.  Data in and of itself is confusing; we need the theory in order to  interpret it. Current nutritional theory is not expressed - it is assumed.  This creates confusion and lack of clarity, as demonstrated by the number of people who are confused about what to eat, because studies often contradict each other.   This presentation will describe the current theory, then look at paradigms in health care and biomedicine, as well as traditional medicines such as Chinese and Ayurveda.  In addition, there will be a discussion of new scientific paradigms such as systems, chaos, and complexity theories, and how they can be applied to the practice and study of nutrition.  There will be a user-friendly example of a nutrition paradigm that helps people make health-supportive dietary choices at all times; this 

paradigm can be used easily by any practitioner who includes dietary counseling.