This kind of thing scares me. As someone who lost 70 pounds eating bacon and eggs for six months, and eating about 5x the recommended daily amount of salt that whole time, I'm worried the government stepping in will make all our food taste like cardboard.

Sugar is the enemy, but so often fat and salt are demonized when in a proper diet these aren't unhealthy at all.

The effects are cumulative, not instant. They only really become obvious in actuarial studies.

Medical cause and effect is a slippery thing. You can't argue from individual experiences because some people are lucky, or they live in a healthier environment or have a healthier lifestyle, or they're less susceptible to certain conditions because of genetics.

Salt and sugar won't kill you instantly. What they actually do is increase the statistical occurrence of common medical conditions across entire populations, in ways that aren't usually obvious until later in life.

You may be lucky. Or you may have undiagnosed high blood pressure and something bad will happen tomorrow. There's no way to be sure. But if you have an interest in longevity, dietary discretion is a wise choice.

As someone who could stand to lose (more than) a few pounds, this bacon and eggs diet sounds interesting. Was this part of a low/no carb diet? Something else?

Indeed what he described sounds a lot like low/no-carb diet, also known as ketogenic diet. While lots of people have success on it, it isn't a panacea: the closer you get to "normal" BMI, the more you will have to manage caloric intake, and for a minority who attempt it, ketogenic doesn't work for them at all. Lots of caveats, but one I see increasingly as more people pick up ketogenic dieting: many go overboard on the protein part, which metabolizes into carbohydrates and defeats the intent. Very, very roughly about 80% of your caloric intake will be comprised of fats, 15% protein, 5% carbs (if any appreciable amount; some will restrict down to 20g or less per day). Go slow, modify one variable at a time, focus on long-term (3+ year) consistent weight loss, accept your lapses with grace, and good luck.

It sounds like a keto diet, which I adopted about a year ago and have lost about 50 pounds on (from ~185 to ~135). I learned about it most from /r/keto on reddit.

Bacon and eggs diet sounds very much like keto. If you don't have already critically high blood pressure and your kidneys aren't damaged for some reason, do try it out.

I'd recommend you read Reddit's /r/keto, specially its side bar, and make sure you always meet water intake goals and take your electrolytes.

I've consistently lost weight on the diet, and consistently gained it back when I abandoned it because Doritos.

Just eat bacon and eggs if you want but make sure you count how many calories you eat during the day and keep it below your TDEE.

Most likely ketogenic diet. Check out the /keto subreddit FAQ.

But are you scared by all the current regulations?

When they banned alum in flour, industry and customers did scream. Today we find it very normal that our flour not contain alum. Alum makes whiter bread and consumers wanted whiter bread, paralleling what Pepsi is saying today.

Atkins-style diets have their downsides. especially in regards to blood pressure. Eating paleo sounds great, but remember that few of our ancestors expected to live past 30.

> Eating paleo sounds great, but remember that few of our ancestors expected to live past 30.

Life expectancy in pre-modern eras may have been around 30-ish years, but that mostly reflects extremely high levels of infant mortality. If you could reach adulthood, you usually expected to die around 50-60.

>Atkins-style diets have their downsides. especially in regards to blood pressure.

Only at the beginning if you already had big, BIG troubles with blood pressure. The salt intake required might take you over the edge before your body adapts to ketosis. But only in those extreme situations and at the beginning; after keto adaptation you will excrete a huge amount of your salt intake rather than absorb it like you would otherwise.

I was able to quit blood pressure meds after using a paleo diet. I'm more relaxed about it now, but honestly it's looking like sugar is way worse than fat for health.

Problem is, paid lobbyists have the patience and insidiousness to sabotage regulation time and again (and have done so). Which isn't so much an argument against government regulation as an argument that the current system is rather broken.

I don't believe we know enough about nutrition (or we'll ever know enough) to make these sort of policies.

We know humans both survive and thrive on widely different diets.