What is it with food fear-mongering?

[Spectral]

Everyone knows that bread is just empty carbs and calories and really should be avoided.

This seems like advice for sedentary people. If you're a runner, or cyclist, or swimmer, you more or less need those "empty" carbs to replenish glycogen stores. I don't understand the idea of modeling a diet around a sedentary lifestyle instead of moving around a bit.

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Well, if food lacks any nutritional value then it isn't actually helpful for your body in any way. I'm not sure what they consider toxic, you probably seem to think something that is hurtful to your body. But maybe their definition is a bit wider, maybe if something doesn't hold any nutritional value it is automatically toxic, as there is stuff coming into your body that your body doesn't need. It might be very slightly hurtful because your body still needs to process it and dispose of it.

This is a sufficiently broad definition of "toxic" as to be useless. It's just plainly not what the word means.

[Pony Soldier]

These days everything kills us. Whether it's food, the sun, the air we breathe, or sitting on your ass the wrong way. We all die sometime so the way I see it, just eat what you love to eat and enjoy life. These "health experts" think all we should be eating are leaves and nuts with some water but not too much because too much of anything is bad for you and can give you cancer or something. It's one thing to cut back on certain foods to lose weight but when they tell you to never eat certain foods ever again because it's "toxic" or "cancerous" that's when it becomes ridiculous. I just eat what I want in moderation and so far I'm still alive with no diseases so they must be full of shit.

[lordmatthias]

I actually had a girl friend who's family was gluten intolerant. In that case it made sense for them, however the thing I found really irritating was that they tried to convince EVERYONE around them that almost all people were gluten intolerant, including myself. I found it extremely irritating because they would always bring up these "studies" that would invariably have huge holes in their testing procedures.

[Endus]

There's a bunch of big issues with the "healthy eating" industry, but arguably the worst is that they do not, for the most part, recognize that body metabolisms differ. For instance, I went on Atkins for two months, and my weight loss was gangbusters. Significantly above the expected weight loss. If Atkins had commercials, I'd be the guy on the commercial saying "I lost 70lbs in 2 months!", even though most people would lose 30-40. I also sat on my ass at a desk job and did basically no exercise, and I ate like crap except for cutting out the carbs, neither of which is "good" but I want to clarify it was JUST the carb-cutting that worked for me, not like "I also started a massive every-day two-hour workout program, but it was totally the diet that got me to lose weight" BS.

Was my experience normal? God no. I'm way outside the bell curve. I'm not going to claim everyone would have the same experience if they tried Atkins. Similarly, I've tried other diets and really struggled to have any benefit, while others lost a ton of weight. Because body metabolism isn't the same for everyone. We need to stop telling people "THIS is the magic diet that will work for everyone!" and start telling them to try a bunch of things because their body metabolism might be Type A, B, C, or D, or possibly something stranger, like Ac or bD.

And that's without getting into food allergies and the like; I'm 90% sure I have celiac disease (in the middle of getting tested now, just waiting to hear back on bloodwork to determine if I need a biopsy). That means wheat really is toxic to me. That doesn't mean wheat is unhealthy for most people, or that going gluten-free is a healthy diet choice. It's something I'm going to get forced into, because by body chemistry is fucked up. I'm looking forward to it, but only because I feel like crap, as you'd expect from someone suffering from celiac disease their entire life. Going gluten-free is bad for you. It's only something you should be considering if you think you have celiac disease or some other wheat allergy. There's this completely fucked-up idea that it's a "health choice" for some people, and it freaking isn't. It's a medicinal diet for people with dietary complications.

[Gheld]

There's a bunch of big issues with the "healthy eating" industry, but arguably the worst is that they do not, for the most part, recognize that body metabolisms differ. For instance, I went on Atkins for two months, and my weight loss was gangbusters. Significantly above the expected weight loss. If Atkins had commercials, I'd be the guy on the commercial saying "I lost 70lbs in 2 months!", even though most people would lose 30-40. I also sat on my ass at a desk job and did basically no exercise, and I ate like crap except for cutting out the carbs, neither of which is "good" but I want to clarify it was JUST the carb-cutting that worked for me, not like "I also started a massive every-day two-hour workout program, but it was totally the diet that got me to lose weight" BS.

Was my experience normal? God no. I'm way outside the bell curve. I'm not going to claim everyone would have the same experience if they tried Atkins. Similarly, I've tried other diets and really struggled to have any benefit, while others lost a ton of weight. Because body metabolism isn't the same for everyone. We need to stop telling people "THIS is the magic diet that will work for everyone!" and start telling them to try a bunch of things because their body metabolism might be Type A, B, C, or D, or possibly something stranger, like Ac or bD.

And that's without getting into food allergies and the like; I'm 90% sure I have celiac disease (in the middle of getting tested now, just waiting to hear back on bloodwork to determine if I need a biopsy). That means wheat really is toxic to me. That doesn't mean wheat is unhealthy for most people, or that going gluten-free is a healthy diet choice. It's something I'm going to get forced into, because by body chemistry is fucked up. I'm looking forward to it, but only because I feel like crap, as you'd expect from someone suffering from celiac disease their entire life. Going gluten-free is bad for you. It's only something you should be considering if you think you have celiac disease or some other wheat allergy. There's this completely fucked-up idea that it's a "health choice" for some people, and it freaking isn't. It's a medicinal diet for people with dietary complications.

You're the most pragmatic health conscious eater I've ever met. You should be the leader of your kind.