"Eat a Balanced Diet" and Other Useless Advice

"Eat a balanced diet."

"Everything in moderation."

"Eat less junk food."

"Eat more fruits and vegetables."

What comes to mind when you hear these phrases again, and again, and again? I'll tell you what comes to my mind: Ka-ka. These overused homilies are about as useful and meaningful as a politician's speech that says "Poverty is bad and should be wiped out." Which is to say, it tells us exactly nothing of any use. It is safe, predictable, and virtually meaningless.

What is a balanced diet? What elements should be balanced? Everything in moderation? Does that include sugar for sugar addicts, or alcohol for alcoholics? What is junk food? Is it synonomous with fast food? All fast food, or just some of it? You mean "slow food" can’t be junk? And which fruits and vegetables should we eat "more of?" How much more? Are they all created equal? Are fruits and vegetables even equivalent on the nutritional pantheon?

No wonder people are getting sick of "expert" advice. Most of it is useless.

Nutrition advice is a lot like politics. The safer you play it, the more meaningless it is. So let's break away from these stupid little platitudes and see if we can begin to make some sense out of this stuff.

"Eat a balanced diet."  OK, that's fine, but what's the definition of balance? If you've got a hundred bucks and you want to give a "balanced" and equal distribution to each of three people, each would get one third. That's balanced, right? Well, food comes in three flavors — protein, carbs, and fat. So why, when these establishment dietitians talk about a "balanced diet," do they "distribute" it as 65% carbs, 25-30% fat, and 10-15% protein? A "balanced" distribution would look a lot more like one third, one third and one third, wouldn’t it?

"Everything in moderation."  Great. How about poison? One man's meat is another's potassium cyanide. Moderation (assuming you could define it, which is not unlike defining the meaning of "is") might be fine for some people, but some foods and substances (like alcohol) are time bomb triggers for certain people. For those people, moderate amounts of the trigger food is not the best strategy — abstinence is. "Everything in moderation" does not work for everyone.

"Eat less junk food."  Great advice, this. Much like the old Lenny Bruce joke about the "expert" advice on swimming in shark-infested waters ("Get out of the water as soon as possible"). Yeah, thanks doc. Of course we should eat less junk, but the problem is that the food industry has done a magnificent job of concealing the "junkiness" of many foods, and has even managed to pass them off as healthy. In this category: most commercial breads, bagels, pastas and cereals, "whole wheat" crackers, "cheese foods," refined vegetable oils which loudly proclaim that they have "no cholesterol," and virtually everything in a snack machine. Ironically, you're probably better off with a breakfast burrito or a salad and bunless mystery meat from McDonalds! (Not much better off, but still...)

"Eat more fruits and vegetables."  Ironically, this is the only platitude that's true, but it's so vague as to be meaningless. Fruits and vegetables are not created equal. Vegetables have the definite edge. Overeating fruits can be a disaster for sugar sensitive people. And if the vegetables you're eating are overcooked slop from a salad bar or a can, don't bother. Vegetables should be eaten as often as possible — lightly cooked, steamed, or raw. Yup, you should eat more vegetables, even though "more" is a relative term. It's virtually impossible to eat too many vegetables, and most people could also stand to eat "more" (and better) protein.

If "experts" stopped looking over their shoulders to see what the party line was, stopped worrying about giving advice that was so politically correct, and started being willing to take a stand, they might actually start making a difference to the people that look to them for guidance.