I think that the post title pretty much sums up everything that I want to say.

Wait… maybe not.

Backing up a bit… After 3 decades of living (that looks much more ominous than it sounded in my head), the last of which has been mostly out of the immediate eye-line of my mom, I am still struggling to figure out what nutrition is and how to use it to best fuel my body and repair all of the damage that I’m pretty sure I have accumulated in my life so far. I am also apparently still trying to figure out how to write in moderate-length sentences without copious amounts of commas and ellipses. And parentheses. This is why I never pursued that English major.

It would be tempting to think that I knew how to weed through the reams of research on food and metabolism and physiology to find the kernels of truth that must exist inside. I mean, I don’t have to rely on mainstream media outlets, physicians, and the government to tell me what is best, right? One would think that, but in this case, to this point, those aforementioned bastions of nutritional knowledge are what I turned to, along with the rest of the lemmings… I mean populace. [As an aside, I'm not saying to disregard everything that these types of people and groups say, but to go into every situation with open skepticism, ask lots of questions, and trust your instincts. Blind followers dont really learn much, and can be easily led off a cliff... a lot like lemmings, wouldn't you say?]

Now that I have been dipping the tip of my toe into the waters (which run quite deep), I can say that at this point, all I know for sure is that no one knows anything. And that right now the best thing for me to do is eat actual food, and not processed “food.” No matter what eating style you subscribe to, this is probably the best option. Because in many of the things that I have read, there is a tendency to link correlation to causation. Just because things associate/correlate with each other does not mean that one necessarily caused the other. Especially when you are looking at multiple variables. There might be some outside influence that is not clear, which is the cause.

OK, so I’ve said what has been said before. I think this comes from reading Michael Pollan, watching Food, Inc., and starting a foray into Weston A. Price/Ancestral-type eating.

I could go into specifics, but none of this is my field of research, so I am wary to sound like an expert in any of it. I can link to people who have made things like this a focus. Denise Minger is probably one of the best people at breaking down nutrition studies and ferreting out what went wrong.

What I will end with is this: don’t just accept things because someone told you so. If you are truly concerned and interested, ask questions and do your own research. Read voraciously about what you are interested in… and read both sides of the argument (because preaching to the choir is an easy trap). Make an informed choice.