 About a decade ago, the American Heart Association expressed concern that their 2020 target of improving cardiovascular health by 20% by 2020 would not be reached if current trends continued. By 2006, most people were already not smoking and had nearly achieved their goal for exercise, but when it came to a healthy diet score, only about 1% got a 4 or 5 out of their 0 to 5 diet quality score, and that's with so-called ideal criteria being like drinking less than 4 and a half cups of soda a week. In the last decade, they saw a bump up to like 1% of Americans even reaching this kind of basic criteria, but given their aggressive goal of improving that by 20% by 2020, they hoped to turn that 1% into like 1.2%. Okay, so how'd we do? Let's look at the 2019 update, and it looks like we've slipped down to as low as 1 in a thousand. You can't even see the green anymore, and American teens got a big fat zero. No wonder perhaps that for all mortality-based metrics, the U.S. ranked declined to like 27th or 28th among 34 industrialized countries. Citizens living in countries with a substantially lower GDP and health expenditures per capita have lower mortality rates than those in the United States. Slovenia beat us by three countries, coming in at 24th, in life expectancy to our 27th, and more recently we seem to have slipped to 43rd, even though we spent trillions on health care more than anyone else. What's the leading risk factor for death in the United States? What we eat. The standard American diet is just to die for, literally. Those trillions in health care spending aren't addressing the root cause. Look at some of these beautiful lung cancer death curves. It took decades to finally turn the corner, but it's so nice to finally see those drops. When are we going to see the same with diet? Approximately 80% of chronic disease and premature death could be prevented by not smoking, being physically active, and adhering to a healthful dietary pattern. But what exactly is meant by a healthy diet? Unfortunately, what we hear about nutrition in the media is often inconsistent and confusing. There's a pressure within today's competitive journalism market for sensationalism. There may even be a disincentive to prevent the facts in context to sell more magazines. And this paper was written back in 1997 before the lure of clickbait headlines. In fact, about three quarters of a century ago, it was noted that, unfortunately, the subject of nutrition seems to have a special appeal to the credulous, the social zealot, and, in the commercial field, the unscrupulous, a combination calculated to strike despair in the hearts of the sober objective scientist. The most important health care problem we face may be our poor lifestyle choices based on misinformation. It's like the climate change deniers. Healthy dietary vice is overshadowed by critics, diabetics, industry interests, and misguided information in the media. Maybe what we need is like an IPCC of nutrition. These days, no single expert, regardless of academic stature or reputation, has the prominence to overcome the obstacles created by confusing media messages and effectively deliver the fundamental principles of healthy living to the public. However, what if there was a global coalition consisting of a variety of nutrition experts who collectively represent the views held by the majority of scientists, physicians, and health practitioners? It could serve as a guiding resource of sound nutrition information for improved health and prevention of disease. Boom! The true health initiative was conceived for that very purpose. A nonprofit coalition of hundreds of experts from dozens of countries agreed to a consensus statement on the fundamentals of healthy living. Check out www.truehealthinitiative.org. Spoiler alert, the healthiest diet is one generally comprised mostly of minimally processed plants.