The big news from last week’s annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition comes from a paper written to answer the question that’s also its title. “Can United States Adults Accurately Assess Their Diet Quality?”

But the big news isn’t that the answer is no 85% of the time. It’s another error made by the 85% who are in error.

And they make it 99% of the time.

Presented by lead author Jessica L. Thomson, Ph.D., a research epidemiologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service in the Southeast Area, the paper reviews data accrued from two cycles of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). In total, nearly 10,000 U.S. adults submitted 24-hour dietary-recall questionnaires and rated their diets using one of five words: excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor.

The participants were asked to make this self-evaluation even though NHANES researchers applied the 2015 Healthy Eating Index to the 24-hour dietary-recall questionnaires and gave each a grade using a school-type scale: A (90-100), B (80-89), C (70-79), D (60-69) and F (0-59).

What Thomson’s research team did in addition is see if the personal ratings correlated to the grading-scale scores. In other words, if the participants who believed their diets to be “excellent” received an A, if those who answered “very good” received a B, et cetera.

As intimated in the intro, the two assessments didn’t match 85% of the time. But what’s really alarming or insightful - or maybe an odd combination of both - is the rate of the aforementioned error made by those in error.

Of the 85% who incorrectly assessed their diets, they thought it was better than it really was 99% of the time.

As you might expect, the paper just presented to the American Society for Nutrition calls for more work to be done nationwide to educate U.S. adults “about what constitutes a healthful diet.” The Healthline.com article where I first read about the paper begins this process by sharing advice offered by Catherine McManus, Ph.D., RDN, LD, assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine:

Watch portion sizes. Eat plenty of nutrient-dense foods, fruits and vegetables, and fiber. Limit your consumption of added sugars, refined grains, and trans fat.

This is sound advice - but the same-old-same-old. The current standard recommendations you can find just about anywhere.

So let me offer an alternative approach, one that allowed a professional cycling team to win the Tour de France seven times from 2012 to 2019 with four different riders. It has come to be known as the Marginal Gains Rule, but for our purposes, let’s call it the 1% Solution.

It’s been used successfully in the business world and espoused by countless life coaches, personal trainers, motivational speakers - as well as one super-successful self-help writer, James Clear.

As you may know, one of Clear’s books, Atomic Habits, has sold more than 7 million copies, been translated into more than 50 languages, and spent about two and a half years on The New York Times Best Sellers list.

What you probably don’t know, though, is a piece of writing that could be seen as his personal manifesto, “Process Improvement: A Brief Guide on How to Master the Art of Continuous Improvement,” begins with the story of that cycling team’s Tour de France success and how before it the man in charge made it his mission to improve every imaginable team activity by 1%.

For instance, he had the floors in the mechanics’ trucks painted white to easily detect dust, which had been found to adversely affect bike efficiency. He had the standard bedding and mattresses in the hotels where the team stayed replaced to improve sleep quality.

No, this guy doesn’t have an excessive case of OCD, only a steadfast belief that if you improve every aspect of riding a bicycle by just 1%, those small gains add up and eventually produce remarkable improvement.

Why not apply that idea to your diet?

A fine example comes from my father even though he’s only applying the 1% Solution in one instance - and not even aware he’s doing it. He’s just eating and thoroughly enjoying a healthy food his ever-loving son buys for him each week.

In the article that appeared five weeks ago, you learned my dad now eats Tomato Basil Harvest Snaps instead of potato chips with his lunchtime sandwiches and as a snack. That single swap does more than eliminate 400 junk calories from his diet in one month.

It also means he consumes 102 fewer grams of total fat, 1330 fewer milligrams of sodium, and 50.4 more grams of fiber.

A few changes like this will insure that the “excellent” or “very good” rating you give your diet is indeed just that.