Truth is hard to know, and it’s almost harder to know in a world full of potentially inaccurate or misleading information. When people say that you should question everything, they fail to acknowledge just how impossible of a task they are requesting, as sometimes even the most basic of subjects can lead to a world of nuance [and the people who say this often exclude themselves from those whom you should question]. Nowhere is this more true than in the world of dietary recommendations.
First of all, we are all raised with standards of eating, both within our families as well as within our cultures, and this often comes to form the cosmic background radiation of everything we believe about food. When an article online criticizes potatoes, or outright says they are bad for you, I instinctively recoil in disgust, not because I have objective proof of the health benefits of potatoes, but because potatoes are such a dietary staple of the United States as well as northern Europe, from which we derive a great deal of our cultural heritage. “How dare you, you swine!” Whether they are healthy or not is almost not as important as realizing the natural reaction to such claims. Granted, when you realize that most potatoes in North America are consumed deep-fried in oils sourced from all over the globe, and this oil is often re-fried numerous times, the picture changes, and that’s why getting at the nuance is so important, as well as so difficult.
I don’t trust Diet Religions. Any of them. And that’s because, as soon as someone aligns themselves with one Diet Religion or another, they often cease to think rationally, preferring to view all evidence from the perspective of their particular Religion, essentially conforming their understanding of reality to it. [Why we even think we need these diet religions is beyond me, but people love to pick sides, I supposed]. The most obvious place you can see this is on Reddit, the most wretched hive of scum and villainy. Spend any time in r/Keto, and people will make all sorts of bold claims about how LDL cholesterol simply doesn’t matter and how hundreds of scientists and studies showing otherwise are lies. This is a very convenient belief for an ideology that treats fats as the principle macro nutrient of health, when certain types of saturated fat are otherwise frequently linked to high LDL and, consequently, the development of cardiovascular disease. Also, who needs fiber? Fiber is a Vegan conspiracy! Spend any time in r/Vegan, and any study suggesting some meat is even remotely healthy is vehemently rejected, as it goes against their belief system. If you do question it, you’re a bigot, and the planet is going to explode specifically because of you. Spend any time in r/Carnivore, and newcomers will be told that black stool and diarrhea are not concerning, you just need to “stick the course” and “push through”, because Carnivore is the Way!
Bloody hell.
Granted, most people are not as extreme as the echo chambers on Reddit would suggest, but I don’t know that any one of us is all too far removed. How could we be? We’re all human. Moreover, because there is so much information available, it’s incredibly difficult to discern which information carries the most weight. My sources will not be the same as your sources, not necessarily because either of us is insincere in our quest, but because we search different things and different things pop up; because different YouTube channels appeal to different personalities. Different friends suggest different books, and different influencers in our lives share different opinions. Our motivations may be different, as well as our genetics and our experiences. It isn’t fair for me to look down on you because you haven’t magically chosen the exact same sources as me, but it also isn’t fair for you to look down on me because I haven’t magically chosen the exact same sources as you. This is not to say some sources aren’t better than others, but it’s pretty arrogant to assume that you have the absolute truth, when science is constantly exploring the nuance to things. Moreover, if you follow other people blindly, you might actually get lucky and stumble upon something close to the Truth, but your rationale for belief might not be a compelling reason for others to agree.
But now, an example.
Several years ago, I watched a short documentary on YouTube about how seed oils are bad for you. I was intrigued, and it made several plausible arguments. Apparently, the shift to seed oils all started with farmers looking for a way to monetize the waste products made from cottonseed, and boom, Crisco. The documentary really puts the nasty mash of waste product in your face, too, to make you feel disgusted. It was an interesting documentary, and after watching it, I went out and bought some beef tallow and lard just to try things out. Neither did me much good, though, as at that time I was beginning to experience very frequent heartburn problems. I don’t remember if the tallow had a direct affect on me, but the lard did, and it almost always gave me heartburn. I eased off for that reason alone. A year later, I would watch an episode of Nutrition Made Simple on YouTube, in which Gil Carvalho explains a meta-analysis looking at seed oils, and all studies covered basically found no adverse affects, which would be followed up with several other studies as they came out. Somehow, at some point, there was a huge push to label seed oils as the cause of all modern ailments. Granted, I don’t think hexane is good for you, and I hate when various oils are mixed together from disparate countries, which all have different (or non-existent) standards of production, so I definitely think quality matters, but I’m not convinced seed oils are inherently bad for you, and some of them have been around for thousands of years, contrary to popular claims (although, technically, “length of time in existence” doesn’t matter in the face of raw health data).
On a slight side note, you live long enough and you start to realize that all documentaries are propaganda. Every one of them. They make you feel smart for watching them, and use a lot of clever tricks like playing clown music over the things they are disagreeing with. They might sometimes be interesting, but they are largely terrible.
But now, the rage against seed oils has a cemented following. This just highlights that although the burden of proof should lie with those who put claims forward, it seems to be human nature to think it’s the responsibility of others to disprove those claims. And this is only one food subject for which this applies. [Granted, if you don’t like seed oils, I don’t think there’s any reason to consume them]. c.f. Brandolini’s Law.
The intellectually honest Vegans will readily admit that a vegan diet doesn’t actually have any discernible health benefits over Pescetarianism and much of Vegetarianism, and their argument is more along the lines of climate change and ethics, and I can respect that. The dishonest Vegans will slurp up any report that suggests any form of animal product is terrible for you, despite a lot of evidence showing otherwise. The honest Ketoers can at least appreciate that even healthy populations known for longevity incorporate a considerable amount of carbohydrates in their diets, and it’s not like the thinner populations of 100 years ago were constantly going around in ketosis, as if that were some sort of healthy ideal. The dishonest Ketoers want you to think that carbs are inherently poison, since that supports their ideology more firmly. The honest Carnivores…I don’t know, man, they’re all kind of crazy. I guess some do actually eat vegetables, maybe? – but it’s a weird diet.
While I’m on that note, I’ll readily admit my own biases. I think Carnivore is a stupid diet. Of course, I don’t have a ton of evidence for that, and that’s a problem, but hey, I’m human. I’ve talked about it with friends, and I still think there’s a place for a short-term Carnivore diet, but in my opinion that’s just to isolate any plants that might actually be giving you issues. The argument that traditional hunter-gather diets represent the human ideal is already problematic (although ancient diets are certainly fascinating and important to study), but Carnivore makes this wild assumption that an all-meat diet is either somehow ideal for humans or is an accurate representation of the “original” diet. Even if we assumed that the “true” original diet was ideal, it’s not clear to me that people would have been eating 2 pounds of feed lot beef every day – more likely, they’d be eating small game with the occasional large kill. Long long ago, I read this book analyzing a handful of indigenous groups, and how the caloric expenditure hunting was often greater than the calories acquired from the hunt, and so food tended to be sourced within a particular radius of any given habitation, and that’s why gathering dominated, with seasonal migrations. However, hunting brought considerable social prestige, so it was still frequently engaged, it just often wasn’t very successful. Fascinating stuff. But again, definitely not 2 pounds of 80/20 beef per day, at least not among the majority of populations, which is another important consideration, since genetics definitely matters. I honestly don’t know where Carnivores get their “bullshit” from, although eliminating refined carbohydrates and ultra-processed foods can certainly bring about some benefits, if I understand things correctly. Thinking back to Reddit, it’s just amazing so many people have serious issues on Carnivore and all anybody will say is, “You just have to stick with it!” Why?! Where are the 100 year old Carnivores? Where do people keep getting this idea that this is healthy? Has this not been repeated numerous times in the past, just to die out as the figureheads die out? But I guess Chad Smith gets to shoot up with ‘roids on a Carnivore diet while pumping serious iron and everybody will think, “Oh hell yeah, I want to look like that! I’m going carnivore right now!” I think people would be surprised you can (apparently) get the same results on a Vegan diet (although not without the ‘roids). But again, I’m very biased against Carnivore.
Going back to the part about cutting out refined carbohydrates and ultra-processed foods…could the Diet Religions maybe get along by focusing on what they have in common? Can we maybe acknowledge that people can have success on a great variety of diets, and every one of these successes puts a ding in the claim that There Can Only Be One? Is it not possible to be healthy on a Vegan and a Keto diet? Adkins? Mediterranean? Vegetarian? Can we maybe all agree that soda is bad for you, and should only be enjoyed in moderation? Can we all agree that the Standard American Diet is bad, and we can all do a little better?That maybe bastardized ingredients and pesticides hurt everybody? That maybe low-fiber diets negatively affect the gut microbiome, but you get to pick the fiber you want to eat? That maybe some meat, in moderation, is fine to include in your diet (at least from a health perspective)? That most of us should probably drink a little more water?
Probably not on Reddit. “Burn the heretic!”