Paleo, vegan, gluten-free — the only certainty about health trends is their reversal
By DAVID SAX at Los Angeles Times
Excerpt:
There are few cities that can compete with Los Angeles for the sheer energy its residents pour into health and diet trends. This town is the world leader in anxiety over what you should, and shouldn't, be eating. That's not necessarily a good thing. Having spent the last few years studying the evolution of various food trends, it's become clear no food trend is more powerful, and potentially dangerous, than one that targets health and diet.
Health trends are not new. Ever since humans have had enough to eat, we have worried about the right things to eat and devised diets to target various goals, including weight loss, beauty, sexual health and disease prevention. Nearly every consumable food and beverage, whether organ meats, tomatoes and grain liquor or sugary sodas have been praised, at one point, as a panacea.
But as much as our knowledge about health and nutrition has evolved, we still know remarkably little about how our food affects our bodies, and this injects the whole question of diet with a tremendous dose of anxiety. Although my friend's 91-year-old grandmother in Buenos Aires happily consumes only steak, bread and potatoes (as she's done for 70-plus years), we in North America are tearing our hair out trying to remember whether it was margarine or butter that would kill us this week.
Keep reading Paleo, vegan, gluten-free — the only certainty about health trends is their reversal – Los Angeles Times.
Related: Eggs, gluten, coffee, red meat, potatoes: Do they deserve the insults?
Excerpt:
With food as with fashion, tastes change. Today, bread cubes dipped in a cheddar cheese fondue seems about as dated as bell bottoms. Nutritional advice changes too. Foods that were once touted as healthful can suddenly gain unsavory reputations, and vice versa.
Sometimes, a single study — and the media reports that go with it — can make or break a food's reputation, says Dr. David Heber, chief of clinical nutrition at UCLA. And sometimes all it takes is a few vocal experts with ulterior motives. When you hear an expert raise alarms about a particular food, Heber recommends considering the source. "Foods get vilified because food is never politically neutral," he says.
