The dietary guidelines I grew up with: Eat low-fat. Fat makes you fat. Cholesterol is dangerous. Eggs are basically a heart attack in shell form. This was the consensus when I was a kid. This was settled science.
Then, around 2015, the guidelines started shifting. Fat wasn't the enemy. Carbs were worse. Eggs were fine. Saturated fat was more complicated than we'd thought. The Mediterranean diet was good. Keto was having a moment.
I followed this stuff religiously for years. Read the studies, or at least the summaries. Tried the different approaches. Never found anything that felt sustainable or evidence-based in a way I trusted.
The problem is nutrition research is genuinely hard to do well. You can't keep people in a lab for years. You have to rely on self-reported data, which is notoriously unreliable. People lie about what they eat. People forget what they ate. People don't know what they ate, most of the time.
The other problem: food companies fund research. This isn't conspiracy—this is just how it works. Studies that show their products are healthy get funded. Studies that don't, don't get funded. This doesn't mean all industry-funded research is wrong. But it means you should ask who's paying.
I finally threw my hands up when I read three different meta-analyses on the same topic, all published in the same year, all with different conclusions. One said red meat was fine. One said it was bad. One said the evidence was too weak to say anything. All in the same year. All peer-reviewed.
My current approach: eat real food. Vegetables. Meat. Fish. Eggs. Fruit. Some grains. Less processed stuff. Cook more than I used to. This is less satisfying than having a definitive answer. I don't know if red meat causes cancer. I don't know if saturated fat is the devil. The research genuinely doesn't know, despite acting like it does.
What I do know: I feel better when I eat vegetables with every meal. I feel worse when I eat too much processed food. My energy is more stable when I eat protein. These are not revolutionary findings. They're just observations about my own body.
Individual variation is huge. Different bodies respond differently to different foods. The idea that one diet is optimal for all humans is, scientifically, ridiculous. There is no one-size-fits-all. There is only what works for you.
I'm not saying nothing is known. Some things are known. Fiber is good. Too much sodium is bad. Processed foods correlate with all sorts of negative outcomes. Eat your vegetables. Most of the disagreements are about details.
But the details—the specific mechanisms, the exact recommendations—that's still being figured out.
I stopped worrying about being optimal. Started focusing on sustainable. Something I can do for the rest of my life, not something I'm doing for sixty days to reach a goal weight.
That's the only approach that works long-term.
The nutrition Influencers are worse than the nutrition scientists. They have answers. Real answers. The secret nobody tells you. The one weird trick that makes everything else irrelevant.
They're selling something. Always.
I'm not. I'm just telling you what works for me.
Figure out what works for you. Test it. Adjust.
That's the scientific method applied to your own life.
Better than following any guru.
