I love how much I'm learning.
Here are some examples, off the top of my head:
- Vegetables have toxins to protect themselves from being eaten. We eat those toxins. Most veggies have been cultivated for reduction in toxins, but there's still plenty of phytochemicals (e.g., salicylates?) that can aggravate people's guts.
- Grains are a bad idea. Best to avoid them entirely. This includes "healthy" "whole wheat" breads.
- Sugar is the main culprit. Bread = sugar.
- When grains were introduced 10K yrs ago, human beings shrunk, and so did our brains.
- LDL cholesterol is meaningless as a risk factor for heart disease. A certain subtype of LDL particle is a risk factor (sugar-ized VLDL particle, I think). However, there are much better markers of heart disease than that. Lab values in general are over-valued, over-used.
- If you don't take any carbs in, your dietary requirements change significantly. Many of the RDAs are based on people with med/high-carb intake.
- For example, you don't get scurvy if you only eat meat, which is counter-intuitive, since meat doesn't have much vitamin C. But, Vitamin C and glucose compete in the body. So if you don't eat carbs, you don't need as much Vitamin C.
- People have lived well on an all-meat diet for decades. Tribes have done it for centuries. There is good evidence that we're primarily carnivorous. Our guts are certainly designed for meat, not vegetables and grains.
- A lot of the fear-mongering around meat was undeserved. Most of the studies purporting a link to heart disease or cancer were based on bad science. There are multiple confounds in all those epidemiological studies (e.g., "meat eaters" are usually getting their meat from McDonalds, as part of a high-carb combo).
- Modern fruits have much higher sugar content than natural.
- Lots of bad science in this area. Lots. Do not trust "expert" opinion. Research it yourself.
- Trust what works for YOU.
- In figuring out what works for you, it helps to start with what worked for the species for millions of years. That's meat and fish as a first choice, with eggs, fruits, berries, nuts, etc. That's why I like the paleo, keto, and carnivore stuff. It gets back to basics. Back to the stuff we're designed to eat.
- Big 4 to avoid: processed foods, processed carbs, sugar, and vegetable oils.