This is so true. I used to be consume articles about healthy eating, but it after all the contradiction I have decided that I'm done reading about it all. I keep it simple with the opinion that eating protein, your veggies and drinking water will be near optimal for most humans, and anything after is just not worth the effort to optimize. 80/20, people.

Make sure you get some fat and carbs in there too, nutrition is nutrition.

I've concluded that eating is good for your health.

> I've concluded that eating is good for your health.

[citation needed]

Jokes aside, you and GP are right; with this level of confusion, there's not much ground for trying to micromanage your diet.

Protein foods generallt have some fat, and veggies have carbs

I've generally found Michael Pollan's advice to be a good rule of thumb: eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Assuming anything more narrow runs the risk of being speculation.

> eating protein

My impression is that you have to be running a major caloric deficit to worry about protein sufficiency (barring an incredibly strange diet), so you may be able to simplify your dietary guidelines even further.

ETA: e.g. brown rice, russet potatoes, and whole wheat bread all have approx the same %DV of protein as they do calories.

I believe that from the minimal perspective, you are right. I actively lift weights/run though so I try to hit around .75-1g/lb daily for recovery (and vanity) purposes.

"I've decided I'm done with all the advice out there. I'm just going to [insert my own advice]."

> and drinking water

I've seen lots of articles on this too.

The vast vast vast majority of people drink way too little water. I drink a little over a gallon a day in addition to the occasional coffee or soda and still occasionally feel the effects of dehydration. I know people who may only have 2-3 glasses of water in a day and nothing else. It's crazy they're still alive.

If you just drink when you are thirsty, you should be fine, it has sustained us as a species for a very long time.

It's easy to not drink when you are thirsty, causing discomfort, weakness, and headaches.

As in you don't know you are thirsty or you don't have access to water?

We have genes that help regulate the use of water in our system. These genes can turn on and off depending on our environment and the availability of water. If you feel the urge to drink over a gallon of water, more power to you, but most of us really don't need that much water. Also, if your pee is consistently clear, you're probably drinking way more water than your system needs.

You may also need to consume more salt and glucose so your body retains more of the water you're consuming. Due to osmotic pressure, your cells can't actually absorb water without the correct salt and glucose to help act as a transport.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11193601

Uh, you sure you don't have something going on?

128+ oz today is a ludicrously high consumption if you aren't working outside in the sun all day long or running a marathon or something.

Don't drink a lot when running a marathon or doing other heavy activities - that's how most people die of water poisoning.

Agreed. After getting it pounded into my head in the military, I drink tons of water a day.

The only thing that sucks, is getting up to pee every 30 to 60 minutes is kind of disruptive to coding in the zone :-)

Overhydration is a thing. Living at the extreme end of anything isn't good for us.

Totally agree. I've heard the simplest "test" is to look at your pee color. It should be very light yellow. If it's clear, you're probably overdoing it.

Reading the latest research on healthy eating isn't a path to health -- especially if the research hasn't been replicated. It's just a news article on preliminary research. Why be upset about that?

Because regular people read this bullshit uncritically, journalists write more pop articles based on that, which makes more people read it... and suddenly your mother starts calling you about pills you should/should not be taking, and your SO starts to insist on random dietary changes.

Even if this stuff doesn't cause huge hurt, it definitely causes annoyance.

I can assure you that "regular people" are not reading journal articles on the latest advances in nutrition research.

They are not (unless someone quotes one in a Facebook comments "debate"). But this is a BBC article, and regular people read that.

There hasn't been any truly new thing in healthy living in decades. Everybody knows they should exercise regularly and eat a variety of fruits and vegetables.

Everything else is purely of academic interest at the moment.

There are a few things that have been useful, though I'm not sure if they were recent but considering how we in the US were raised to eat they've helped me quite a bit: the effect of low-carb diet and intermittent fasting on insulin resistance are the two that have helped me recently.

There have been some interesting studies on intermittent fasting. Refined sugar has been identified as a thing to avoid. We have reversed a lot of flawed studies (IE fat is bad).

I'd expand those recommendations a little bit:

- Exercise regularly

- Eat a variety of fruits and veggies

- Don't overeat, especially junk food (we can argue over which foods are good or bad for you, but a lot of our diets consist of things such as potato chips that are obviously bad for you, at least in large quantities)

- Stay hydrated

- Don't be too stressed

Sleep? ;)

Yeah, the whole appeal of the supplement industry, exercise infomercial contraptions, and insulin regimens for T2 diabetes is that they don't require lifestyle change which is the whole challenge of being healthy.

If you have a specific diagnosis, an awesome bullshit detector and hang out in the right circles, it is possible to make some sense of things and make informed choices that make a meaningful difference in your life.

It's only nigh useless if you are some "standard issue normal human with no alterations (aka health issues)" and want generic advice about what works for everyone all the time. Then it's pretty eye-roll worthy, for what I feel are kind of obvious reasons.

For those wanting some reference to the Harvard Medical School coconut oil war:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-a-harvard-professor-is-call...

For all the back and forth there are some things we do know. Get your macro- and micronutrients. Don't eat too many toxins and heavy metals. Too much sugar is bad.

You'll probably be mostly fine whether you eat coconut oil or not, as long as the quantities are not completely unreasonable.

Mostly agree, but:

> toxins

Can you define what you mean in particular? Because half of the nonsense in the dietary space is talk about "toxins" (and "chemicals").

Most commonly they're the defense chemicals employed by plants to discourage animals from eating them, like saponins or tannins. Sometimes they're the chemicals sprayed on plants by humans to discourage non-human animals from eating them, or non-edible plants from competing for resources. It might just be a chemical vital to the organism that coincidentially interferes with digestion of essential nutrients for other organisms, like phytic acid or oxalic acid. They might even be like capsaicin, to discourage one type of animal from eating a fruit (mammals), while a more preferred animal is completely unaffected (birds).

Cassava, better known in the US as the source material for tapioca, contains chemicals that can easily decompose into poisonous HCN. If you crush the cassava, as when biting it raw, the decomposition enzyme mixes with the chemicals and produces poison. If you leach and ferment the root in water, the toxins are removed. If you grind the root into paste and let the HCN escape into the atmosphere, the toxins are removed. Without those toxins, the food is safe[r] to eat.

Food is made of a lot of different chemicals, and digestion encompasses a lot of different catalyzed chemical reactions. Some chemicals will slow down, speed up, prevent, or enable reactions between other chemicals.

A lot of that just gets oversimplified to "toxin" because the information has to be understandable to people who don't have a doctorate-level education in biochemistry. Because of that oversimplification, scammers can exploit the intentional vagueness and ambiguity to turn fear into money. In that case, the "toxins" are just bullshit designed to scare you into buying stuff. The easiest way to distinguish between fact and FUD is by asking the claimant to name the toxin. If they can say "cyanogenic glucosides produce cyanide poisons on maceration that interfere with the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood" it's probably a real thing. If they say "big agri-corporations spray them on all the food to keep us unhealthy, fat, and depressed" it's probably bullshit.

Agreed, it's sensationalism, both the writer and the conductor of the study.

My experience in academia is that researchers rely heavily on controversy and drama to further their studies. It's part of the game they have to play to continue to receive funding or gain attention in the public eye.

The author of the paper seems like he's marketing a problem that he'll try to solve in the coming years, by building a company that offers bespoke probiotic solutions based on analysis of an individual customer's microbiome. Not a bad business model honestly, it's spreadshirt for your gut.

NB: I run a nutrition company and have an MS

The general public can rest relatively assured that, when there is a broad consensus on some subject, with numerous studies published over the years repeatedly finding similar results, it's a good idea to follow the scientific advice (that typically follows the consensus).

For example, in what regards coconut oil, it's far from just two doctors from Harvard recently saying that coconut oil is bad for you. From the wikipedia page on the vegetable fat:

Due to its high levels of saturated fat, the World Health Organization, the United States Department of Health and Human Services, United States Food and Drug Administration, American Heart Association, American Dietetic Association, British National Health Service, British Nutrition Foundation, and Dietitians of Canada advise that coconut oil consumption should be limited or avoided.

The same goes for various allegedly "controversial" subjects like saturated fat and heart disease, sugar, salt, etc. You can typically find advice by multiple public health organisations and multiple studies reporting findings very similar to each other, stretching back decades. Just because then a new study comes out that bucks the trend, which is immediately widely reported in the popular news as a "groundbreaking new study", or because someone (often, not an expert) writes a book that tells "the truth" about the subject, is no reason to get confused.

In science always follows the consensus, as in business always follow the money.

The history of science is of the most established and popular beliefs being he laughingstock of tomorrow.

Really? So then we can't trust science - is that the idea?

Sums up my feelings. At this point, I firmly believe that the negative physiological consequences from the stress about nutrition outweigh any benefits.

Eat intelligently (I think we can agree that processed foods and sugar is less good than fresh veggies), and lower the stress.

Citation? The pro-coconut oil camp seems to be mostly based on traditional medicine claims. The science seems pretty uniformly opposed. Every study yields fresh data but it usually takes many years and a longitudinal study to get confident conclusions.

Do you mind sharing? When I skimmed the Harvard article my take away was just that lots of fat is bad for you (duh), but there was nothing innately bad about coconut oil. Just don't delude oneself into thinking fat from coconut oil is healthy.

I think the failure is in presuming that the number of double bonds in the carbon chains of the fatty acids is the dominant factor, when clearly overall chain length and the position and orientation of the double-bonds are also significant factors.

Researcher says: "saturated fat is bad for you."

I ask: "Is laurin (tri-lauric acid homoglyceride) worse or better than stearin? When lipases release the fatty acids, is free lauric acid worse or better than free stearic acid? Do acetic acid and formic acid count as saturated fats in your analysis? Is there a significant metabolic difference between eating fats as mono-, di-, or triglycerides, or as non-esterified fatty acids? Does the comparison with unsaturated fats change if the fats in question are exposed to heat and oxygen prior to consumption?"

Chemically, those fats are all different. Metabolically, many of them are transformed via catalytic proteins into different chemicals, with certain steps being rate-limited, or resource-competitive with other steps.

But it appears as though no one really knows all that much about fat, other than you need to eat a certain quantity of fatty acids with one double bond three carbons from the terminal end (omega-3) because the human body cannot produce those by itself, and they are required for certain hormones and structures.

As far as I know, coconut oil, when compared to most other common vegetable oils, has a higher fraction of saturated fatty acids in it, but those fatty acids are also significantly shorter than the fatty acids typically found in animal fats and other vegetable oils. They are different fats, and a human body digests them differently. Do they follow different metabolic chains to achieve the same result, or do they produce different results? I don't know. No research I have seen has delved that deeply into those properties of dietary fats.

I believe the "inately bad" thing about coconut oil is that it's more than 80% saturated fat (wikipedia says 82.5).

What's wrong with saturated fatty acids?

Scientists think they cause cardiovascular disease:

There are strong, consistent, and graded relationships between saturated fat intake, blood cholesterol levels, and the mass occurrence of cardiovascular disease.[5] The relationships are accepted as causal.[24][25]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat#Association_with...

the issue is rather the quality of the articles and what we as humans in general prefer to read. we'd rather read about an extreme (this is the greatest, this is the worst) or a conflict (person a says the opposite to person b). it's basically just a symptom of decaying journalistic standards. incidentally it's often also cheaper to produce such content.

there is probably an academic consensus that goes one way or the other, but our journalism has decayed enough that they don't even bother researching this.

Well of course results vary from paper to paper. I'm sure we all know that science progresses as general consensus. It's important to follow larger trends, not the day to day experiments.

Coconut oil is the default cooking oil for most of South India. An analysis with north India might provide good data set.

Yeah, I'm about considering tossing food in water. If it floats, witch (burn it!), and if it sinks, its not a witch.

Cause that's about as "scientific" our nutrition analysis is.

Aside not eating carbohydrates (that whole diabetes thing), I have no clue what's 'healthy' and what's not.

Well, the issue is that people will buy things like probiotics with the belief that it's helping them, and probiotics being universally healthy is one of the most dogmatic nutrition facts that anyone can recite.

If there is controversy here, then people would likely err better by not buying extra health supplements like probiotics that may be causing harm.

Same with coconut oil. I go out of my way to use it because I heard it was healthy despite it infusing everything I cook with a cheap coconut taste. If there is controversy, then I would just use other oil products.

It's not like it's a debate on which way to spool your toilet roll where inaction is inconsequential.

> probiotics being universally healthy is one of the most dogmatic nutrition facts that anyone can recite

Considering that probiotics are formally defined as having a beneficial effect when ingested, there is good reason for this to be "dogmatic".

The question then would be "what's a probiotic and what isn't?"

What isn't probiotic: definitely antibiotics.

But it increasingly seems that inaction is inconsequential. The only dietary information I trust is to keep your weight down. Being overweight puts extra strain on joints, ligaments, as well as internal organs. Everything else just seems like the fad dujour.

Right, what I meant is that you aren't taking the "eh, this is too controversial to make a decisive health decision" route when you're still going out of your way to consume things you otherwise wouldn't.

The parent post seemed to dismiss things as controversial, so I suggest that you can indeed take action on controversy: avoid buying those supplements.

There is a religious aspect to coconut oil. People believe it cures everything. It's just saturated fat.

I heard Coconut Oil was in secret negotiations to develop Half-Life 3. In all seriousness, everyone's always looking for an easy, digestible answer, whether that be diet, politics, or information. This is why engineers and experts who understand the incredible complexities of an issue tend to make poor salespeople, when you know all the edge cases it can be hard to give a simple answer because most people are inherently good and honest. The best sales and support people tend to be those that can distill complex concepts down to meaningful summaries without losing important information.

The only 'controversy' around coconut oil is that it is very high in saturated fat - much more so than lard, beef dripping or even butter.

It doesn't appear to have any mitigating health factors, as had been claimed (a lot, by a lot of people and a lot of the press), that would count against this. So it appears to be a really unhealthy fat, which should be used sparingly.

There is still a debate about how unhealthy all unsaturated fat is - so no, they shouldn't avoid it.

... which is basically making Bucephalus355's point for them. There's too much confusion, too many unsubstantiated claims.

Well it has medium chain fatty acids. Most saturated fats are long chain.

trans-fats are unambiguously bad for you. There's been a lot of spillover demonization of saturated fats which I don't trust at all.

>There is absolutely no way the public can reasonably believe yay or nay on any new thing about healthy living.

There is nothing new about healthy living.

Eat plants. Drink water. Sleep well.

Don't add salt to anything. Avoid sugar. Eat meat only in moderation.

Fiber from beans makes you poo good.

Coffee and alcohol in moderation is alright. Drinking to the point of visible external intoxication is not "in moderation".

Exercise, even if only a walk in the evening.

If you are overweight, eat fewer calories each day than your body needs to function. If you are underweight, eat more calories each day than your body needs to function.

None of that sells books, or drives eyeballs to the latest ad-infested "Doctors say x will kill ya!" article.

> Don't add salt to anything.

This is a good guideline for people who are on a sad diet and get plenty of sodium from processed foods and meats, but someone following the other guidelines you list and not salting anything is likely to be more at risk of low sodium than high, depending on their personal risk factors (HBP and genetic history).

(assuming the reason "avoid overly processed foods" isn't listed is that it goes without saying)

I followed the low sodium bullshit for more than a decade and never put two and two together: that what was making me debilitatingly drowsy on rest days after multiple days of vigorous exercise was the lack of sodium.

Almost exactly year ago I started adding salt to everything. Not only did the drowsiness go away, I haven't had single muscle cramp in the twelve months since.

Yeah, you need some salt if you eat unprocessed food. Sorry.

I can see some problems with your diet, such as it does nothing to prevent iodine deficiency, since you don't eat (iodized) salt, drink only water and basically don't eat anything containing iodine.

You could say the same thing about any discipline where professionals have opposing viewpoints. It's nothing new that there is disagreement within a discipline. Some of the topics that people are complaining about are very new. So of course there are going to be contradictory findings before it is settled.

It's important to use accepted science like Cochrane collab.

https://us.cochrane.org/

"You could say the same thing about any discipline where professionals have opposing viewpoints. "

I guess the problem in nutrition is that it impacts everybody's daily decisions. It doesn't make much difference to me if string theory or super symmetry works but it makes a difference to know whether I should avoid coconut oil or not.

If someone wants to experiment and be on the cutting edge they can follow the latest news stories. The stakes really aren't that high for most people. Those who follow the standard dietary advice can live a full life.

Totally agree. Follow the normal food advice and you are already 95% there.

Sometimes theoretical physics makes a big difference in our daily lives too. For example if we live in a multiverse (quantum many worlds or inflationary) and if that implies immortality.

Tell that to... well, vast majority of people. Problem with dietary studies isn't internal disagreement - it's that every iteration gets published in pop press as if it was scientific consensus, creating fads readily exploited by marketers. It's a shitshow.