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Comment by kstenerud | Hacker News Reader

sigh yet another chapter in "X is bad for you! No, wait, X is good for you! it's actually Y that's bad for you. No wait, it's actually Z!"

After decades of this I've decided they're all full of shit until someone can come up with extraordinary evidence to the contrary.

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I don't think there's been much change in this area, it's been "eat in moderation, eat a balanced diet and exercise" for as long as I can remember.

Yes, but what is "moderation"? What constitutes a "balanced diet"? They've been moving targets for as long as I can remember.

Meanwhile we've gone through endless cycles of "cholesterol is bad", "cholesterol is good", "only bad cholesterol is bad", "sugar is bad", "fat is bad", "fat is good, but saturated fat is bad", "carbs are bad". Eggs have gone through two complete revolutions of being bad for you and good for you. And now the new pariahs include white bread, white rice, and potatoes. Madness.

Here's the message I've been given, maybe it's changed without my noticing but I think it's remained consistent -

balance means giving each variable in an equation similar weight. Eating only one or two food groups is not optimal for health.

Moderation - not eating more calories than you burn throughout the day.

edit - I agree with you about the ever rotating axis of nutritional evil. It's BS. I think part of the reason we go through it though is people ignoring the basic advice I mentioned earlier that's held for so long. Why eat broccoli when I can eat McDonalds? Exercise is hard. ETC

It's not just that; it's the temporal nature of what constitutes a balanced diet (i.e. what the variables are, and what amounts are "correct"). Here's a short history of the USDA Food Pyramid, for example: http://www.healthy-eating-politics.com/usda-food-pyramid.htm... (note: this is from a site pushing the low-carb diet, and is suitably slanted in that direction, but is useful for illustrative purposes)

And that's just in the USA. Every country has their own ideas on what is "balanced".

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