Almost everyone who studies this stuff professional agrees that the following are bad, and should be limited:
High sugar, low fiber foods: soft drinks, candy, donuts, cake, ice cream, most other classic desserts.
Oily/fatty processed foods: chips, certain crackers, shelf stable baked goods like cookies, donuts, wrapped cakes, really greasy pizza.
Trans fats
Alcohol
Almost everyone agrees that the following are good, and should be maximized:
Leafy vegetables
Colorful vegetables
Beans, peas, chickpeas, lentils, other cooked legumes/pulses
Fermented/pickled vegetables, especially through lactic acid fermentation
It’s not universal, but it’s a pretty broad consensus that the Mediterranean diet is good for you, which includes a lot of:
Fish, especially fatty fish low on the food chain, like sardines and anchovies
Other seafood, especially those low on the food chain
Whole fruit
Nuts
Extra virgin olive oil in reasonable quantities
It’s also not universal, but the broad consensus is that the following are bad for you when eaten in excess:
Cured meats like sausage/ham
Fried foods
Red meat
Low fiber white starches (white bread, white pasta, white rice)
For me personally, I eat a lot. I want to eat a lot. I could win amateur eating contests in my youth, and even today, left to my own devices, I have no trouble eating 2000 calories in a single meal, 5000 calories in a single day. So I need to manage my hunger, and I’ve found that for me, fiber and protein promote satiety, so I eat a lot of legumes: beans, lentils, green beans, peas, peanuts. These are basically my staple food, and I drink a lot of water, and eat a lot of watery foods (fruit, soup, etc.).
I mostly avoid processed sugar (no sugary drinks or candy or desserts). I leave fried foods, which I love, for special occasions. I have seriously reduced my consumption of red meat, almost to zero, mainly out of social responsibility, but also with an eye towards health.
I avoid bringing unhealthy foods into my house. It’s a lot easier to avoid eating them when I would have to go out of my way to order it.
I’m also working out all the time. Not just to buy me a calorie budget for eating, but also because knowing I need to go to the gym later helps control my portions and choices earlier in the day. Nothing worse than trying to squat 330+ lbs (150+ kg) with a huge portion of greasy fried chicken sitting in your stomach.
The slight disagreements on some of the edges doesn’t change the strong consensus on the core parts.
The existence of a debate as to whether Kobe Bryant was better than Michael Jordan doesn’t mean that people have no idea who is or isn’t a good basketball player. No matter how you slice it, there are going to be people clearly on one end of the spectrum, people clearly on the other, and all sorts of people in between, where the precise rankings might differ from expert to expert, but where nobody is suddenly saying that Michael Jordan was worse than some random middle aged guy who can’t dribble or shoot.
You may find someone disagree as to whether whole wheat bread is worse for you than a grilled steak. You’ll never find a meaningful debate about whether a donut is healthier than an apple.
The existence of a debate as to whether Kobe Bryant was better than Michael Jordan doesn’t mean that people have no idea who is or isn’t a good basketball player
Isn’t that a matter of opinion though? I mean I’m not disagreeing with your point at large about the consensus on diet, but diet isn’t a matter of opinion like wether a sport player is better than another.
People will back their opinions with quantitative models, though. Someone with a true shooting percentage of 60% is going to be considered better than someone at 40%. Someone who gets 10 rebounds per 48 minutes played is going to generally be considered better than someone who gets 2. But it might be a matter of opinion as to how to weight different elements of a box score, like points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, turnovers, free throw percentage, etc.
Nutrition science is also quantitative, with some difference in opinion on how to weight different factors. But the data is collected, there are models of how food causes healthy or unhealthy outcomes, and different priorities of which features of health are more important. Any opinions worth their salt are going to be grounded in quantitative analysis.
True, very true (although I expect with sport you’ll still get them zealots who argue through their teeth for their favourite player regardless of stats, but I’m certainly not one of them)
People do agree.
Almost everyone who studies this stuff professional agrees that the following are bad, and should be limited:
Almost everyone agrees that the following are good, and should be maximized:
It’s not universal, but it’s a pretty broad consensus that the Mediterranean diet is good for you, which includes a lot of:
It’s also not universal, but the broad consensus is that the following are bad for you when eaten in excess:
For me personally, I eat a lot. I want to eat a lot. I could win amateur eating contests in my youth, and even today, left to my own devices, I have no trouble eating 2000 calories in a single meal, 5000 calories in a single day. So I need to manage my hunger, and I’ve found that for me, fiber and protein promote satiety, so I eat a lot of legumes: beans, lentils, green beans, peas, peanuts. These are basically my staple food, and I drink a lot of water, and eat a lot of watery foods (fruit, soup, etc.).
I mostly avoid processed sugar (no sugary drinks or candy or desserts). I leave fried foods, which I love, for special occasions. I have seriously reduced my consumption of red meat, almost to zero, mainly out of social responsibility, but also with an eye towards health.
I avoid bringing unhealthy foods into my house. It’s a lot easier to avoid eating them when I would have to go out of my way to order it.
I’m also working out all the time. Not just to buy me a calorie budget for eating, but also because knowing I need to go to the gym later helps control my portions and choices earlier in the day. Nothing worse than trying to squat 330+ lbs (150+ kg) with a huge portion of greasy fried chicken sitting in your stomach.
Nobody can agree on quantity/quality etc. though
The slight disagreements on some of the edges doesn’t change the strong consensus on the core parts.
The existence of a debate as to whether Kobe Bryant was better than Michael Jordan doesn’t mean that people have no idea who is or isn’t a good basketball player. No matter how you slice it, there are going to be people clearly on one end of the spectrum, people clearly on the other, and all sorts of people in between, where the precise rankings might differ from expert to expert, but where nobody is suddenly saying that Michael Jordan was worse than some random middle aged guy who can’t dribble or shoot.
You may find someone disagree as to whether whole wheat bread is worse for you than a grilled steak. You’ll never find a meaningful debate about whether a donut is healthier than an apple.
Isn’t that a matter of opinion though? I mean I’m not disagreeing with your point at large about the consensus on diet, but diet isn’t a matter of opinion like wether a sport player is better than another.
People will back their opinions with quantitative models, though. Someone with a true shooting percentage of 60% is going to be considered better than someone at 40%. Someone who gets 10 rebounds per 48 minutes played is going to generally be considered better than someone who gets 2. But it might be a matter of opinion as to how to weight different elements of a box score, like points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, turnovers, free throw percentage, etc.
Nutrition science is also quantitative, with some difference in opinion on how to weight different factors. But the data is collected, there are models of how food causes healthy or unhealthy outcomes, and different priorities of which features of health are more important. Any opinions worth their salt are going to be grounded in quantitative analysis.
True, very true (although I expect with sport you’ll still get them zealots who argue through their teeth for their favourite player regardless of stats, but I’m certainly not one of them)