Zigurds Zariņš, the founder of nutrition education in Latvia, dietician, Doctor of Medicine and assistant professor at RSU, passed away on January 8. It is not easy to be completely objective when conducting research in which the business interests of food additives and various pharmaceutical manufacturers collide. It is not easy to disagree when a large part of society becomes fascinated by a trendy diet or a lifestyle that opinion leaders declare to be "healthy".
One of the successes of Latvian science is that the founder of our nutrition science was Zigurds Zariņš, who, without giving in to conjuncture and business interests, made the main criterion for assessing the healthiness of a diet solely based on medical observations, studies and the results of laboratory analyses. Therefore, in his seminal work "Uztura mācība" (Zigurds Zariņš, Lolita Neimane, Edgars Bodnieks, "Uztura mācība", Seventh revised and updated edition. Riga: University of Latvia, 2018), lecturer Zariņš unsparingly and without mercy denounced all the diets and food additives that were and still are promoted, but which have no rigorous scientific and medically proven justification. Because Zigurds Zariņš' findings were so distasteful to the business interests of pharmaceuticals, food additives and athletes' food companies, they were not promoted or advertised.
I will mention just a few of Zigurds Zariņš' insights.