We are not talking about a PHd here, we are talking about the Presidency of the United States.
We need someone who stands for what right. Someone who can lead and inspire confidence.
What is the end to which we want to apply scientifically-gained knowledge of nutrition and health or anything else, for that matter? That answered, what are the means we will employ?
In the broadest terms, is the end to be a state of knowledge in which the individual is able to understand the possible consequences of his behavior and is then free to choose according to his own desires and goals, the general state of society then an amalgam of informed individual choices? Or is the end to be a state of being in which the individuals choices are limited by others to a range calculated by them most likely to result in that state of being, the general state of society then an expression of coerced individual actions?
The track record of authoritarianism has been excellent in terms of its persistence throughout history and across cultures but has been abysmal in terms of knowledge, in terms of human rights, and in terms of technological inventiveness.
The reason for this is that authoritarianism or statism doesnt allow the freedom for the wide range of viewpoints necessary for generating and testing hypotheses, let alone the ad hoc experimentation and innovation by individuals for their own reasons that form the basis of a developing, knowledge-based, technological society. Discovery is not allowed to take one where it will--it must be restricted to the party line.
Given the complexity of life, the narrow range of understanding possessed by any particular group is guaranteed to fall short at some point. Given the concentration of power exercised under a centralized system, the failures are guaranteed to have widespread and crippling effects. By contrast, the multiplicity of successes and failures over a wide range of scale that appear so chaotic in a state of liberty have the benefit of limiting the damage and of spreading throughout society successes which can be emulated and modified to fit local conditions.