Why Is There Such Controversy Over What a Healthy Diet Should Be?

No One Seems to Know What Constitutes a Healthy Diet

It has to be one of the biggest global conspiracies that we find ourselves in an era where we can sequence the human genome, put robots on mars and make our poop disappear with a simple press of a button and yet feel like there's no real scientific consensus on what broadly constitutes a nutritionally healthy diet. Bacon and eggs make for a fine breakfast...except the bacon will give you cancer...but the eggs are a good source of protein...except the yoke will clog your arteries...in a good way though, because your arteries can't function without the vitamins B2, D and Zinc contained in eggs...except everything other than kale gives you an extreme case of dandruff where eventually your entire head disintegrates into flakes and you die.

If you eat this piece of paper you get the combined benefits of all these diets

Sound familiar? It's like all our Newtons and Einsteins went exclusively into maths and physics, while every nutritionists and cardiologists were, at one point, aspiring astrologists but failed their tarot card reading exams. Thus, they had to pursue their lifelong passion of bullshitting others in their new professions instead. Why the hell does this appear to be the case?

The Science Is Contentious

The science behind food may not appear to be as deep or advanced as cramming billions of transistors onto a chip, engineering a self learning computer or building a lightsabre, but in many ways, just like long division, it is more difficult. The problem lies in isolating causes and effects as the data in this area is very convoluted. For instance, the relationship between saturated fat and heart disease is difficult to draw conclusively considering there are so many other factors like smoking, environmental factors, variations in genes among individual, other dietary intake etc. that could contribute to the causal link.

I just want to go to Taco Bell

Where there are so many variables at play, longitudinal scientific studies can often establish a stronger correlation between bowel cancer and consuming yellow M&Ms than red ones. Distinguishing causation from correlation can feel like sorting snails based on gender (they're hermaphrodites) outside of very obvious cases. This is why nutritionists can generally agree that getting wasted on a bottle of Listerine a day is perhaps not great for your long term health, but can't reach a consensus on whether half a glass of red wine is healthy or not, especially if some of them are wasted from chugging a bottle of Listerine themselves.

Food Industry

The multi billion dollar food industry's hunger to exploit our sense of concern about healthy eating is only matched by our own hunger after finishing one of their meals. For example, there is no scientific definition of 'organic' with respect to food, it is entirely a marketing term. Yet these days the 'organic food' industry has grown exponentially into the billions. On top of all this, we have fad diets endorsed by celebrities all fighting for our attention - the Paleo diet boasts the quickest weight loss results, the Atkins diet promises to keep weight off in the long run, while the Fruit Cleansing diet supports up to 4000 transactions per second and is only 5% away from activating segregated witness.

Don't get too excited, it's not Democrats vs Trump's approval ratings

It's not wonder we can't find the facts under all this noise. The voices of the competent and honest experts are being drowned out by the dishonest and competent as well as the honest and incompetent experts and are insufficiently aided by the dishonest but incompetent ones who, through dumb luck, just happen to be right as well. Most of the information that seeps through are merely marketing gimmicks trying to sell us something. While I'd like to think I'm too smart to be susceptible to this type of manipulation, the 3 piece deep fried deluxe chicken meal with a diet coke I had for lunch speaks otherwise.

My Recommendation

Well considering that everything other than a bottle of Listerine a day is a contender for a healthy diet, I'm pretty much above reproach here whatever my recommendation. Our taste pallet and appetite were evolved to suit an environment where there was a scarce supply for caloric intake, rather than an excess of it as there is today. Things that our ancestors desperately needed just to survive like sugar and fat, are now slowly killing us. On that basis, I would hazard a guess that most foods you enjoy are probably bad for you and foods you despise are all superfoods. So if you love ice cream and hate Brussels sprouts then just grit your teeth and embrace a diet that's exclusively comprised of the mini cabbage. Unless of course, you actually enjoy Brussels sprouts, then you should avoid them at all costs for they'll probably give you herpes.

mmmm....just like how mama use to make it

Of course the more disgusting you find the food the better it is for your health. You're likely to develop an extraordinary constitution and physique as well if you gave up burgers and fries and ventured into the wilderness to adopt a strict diet of diarrhoea juice being wrung out of a large clump of elephant turd directly into your mouth, a la Bear Grylls. But what would I know? I'm really just as confused as everyone else, so you might want to take everything I say with a grain of salt, not that anyone actually knows whether that's good for you or not...

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