“The seeds of Red Pen Reviews were planted in 2016 when Stephan Guyenet came across an intriguing series of articles written by a nutrition scientist named Seth Yoder. Seth’s articles were very simple: he chose a popular nutrition book, looked up every reference in it, and judged whether the references were accurately represented in the book. The results, to put it lightly, were illuminating. Seth’s method uncovered widespread misuse of evidence in best-selling nutrition books that had received glowing reviews in popular media. After reading Seth’s articles, Stephan realized that the public couldn’t count on typical book reviews to sort fact from fiction. Besides what Seth had written, there were few effective alarms in place to warn readers about low-quality information and direct them to high-quality information.

Yet Seth’s method had a problem: it took too much time, meaning he could only publish one or two reviews per year. His method also offered a narrow window into a book’s factual accuracy, and as useful as that was, it didn’t provide all the information a reader needs to decide whether to read a book. Seeing the value of Seth’s method, Stephan resolved to build on it to create something more efficient, more consistent, more objective, more informative, and more accessible for the typical reader. He brought together a team of thoughtful nutrition scientists including Seth, Mario Kratz, Katherine Pett, and Kevin Klatt, and together they built the Red Pen Reviews method.

Inspired by the semi-quantitative scoring systems Stephan had used in his research and Seth uses in his food safety inspection work, the Red Pen Reviews method addresses many of the shortcomings of typical nutrition book reviews. The end result is better information for readers, better incentives for authors and publishers, and ultimately we hope, better health for us all.