What current medical / diet advice do you think will be debunked in the future?

[cheeseismydownfall]

I was chatting to my mum earlier about how much nutrition and diet advice has changed since I was a teenager (I'm early 40s now). I remember that the received wisdom was that fat was the enemy of weight-loss but you could eat sugar with impunity - I recall we had a BBC diet book which basically said exactly this! And I also remember lots of talk about eating little and often, basically not every letting yourself get hungry lest your blood sugar levels dipped. Whereas now sugar is widely acknowledged to be the devils work, and regular fasting is claimed to be beneficial to our health. Oh, and I remember that we were not supposed to have more than two eggs a week or risk certain death from high cholesterol, and that margarine was better for you than butter.

The thing is, these weren't fads - this was the mainstream advice you probably would have been given if you went to the doctor or a dietitian. It makes me wonder if what we believe to be healthy now will prove to be just as misguided in 20 years time. What you you think?

Carbs are evil.

I think any diet advice that is too much of a generalisation is ridiculous. I'm genetically a Celt; sturdily built for a hard life mending my bothy roof in a force ten gale with a baby under each arm.

My body needs carbs, and I shake and feel sick constantly if I try to go low-carb, so I try to eat good ones sometimes and do plenty of rushing around.

But that's going to be different for someone of a different body type, isn't it?

Honestly believe the demonization of sugar will be rejected in the not too distant future.

I’m in the same age bracket as you and think similarly.

I think faddish (as opposed to medical or religious) veganism, paleo diets, raw food diets, and other trends that generally go down well in California are going to go the same way as the low-fat craze. Frankly, anything that’s not “everything in moderation” is ridiculous.

The biggest con though has to be the water thing. Fiji water, smart water, Evian vs volvoc.... I often think that if someone from the lost tribes of the Amazon were parachuted into my life, they’d laugh their heads off. £3.50 for a cup of coffee!! £2 for a bottle of water!! For rain, which literally falls out of the sky! Fresh vegetables without man made chemical shite on them x3 more expensive than veggies that have been treated!! Chicken cheaper than some vegetables!! Smh. It’s the world gone mad, really.

That artificial sweeteners are a harmless substitute for sugar.

There's already a lot of anecdotal info coming through a lot of people noticing they don't tolerate them well.

I think we'll discover they mess too much with insulin levels, thus not being as useful for weight loss as us being claimed, cause gastro problems and I honestly wouldn't be surprised if at least one is carcinogenic.

I think low carbing will be debunked.

I am trying to move towards being predominantly whole food plant based and I cant see that being debunked particularly.

I think a mix of good carbs, a little fat and lots of veg is best.

Just need to stick to it 😂

All of them. The diet & food industry is worth trillions of dollars and someday people are going to realize that, just like big tobacco, the only thing they are interested in is keeping you hooked. I think in the near future we will see massive government crack downs on what is put in our food, how it's marketed and major disclaimers and controls on diets and the diet industry. And once you see that happen, you'll see the obesity epidemic start to disappear.

I think we all know deep down that lots of vegetables and water with some fruit, dairy and carbs on the side is the best thing. The less processed food is the better it is for us.

I think most of the fads mentioned so far have already been thoroughly debunked if anyone bothers to look. Scientists have been going on about the Mediterranean forever. Lord knows why people are going carb free, raw, paleo, etc, when there’s such a delicious option already on the table (so to speak ).

Turmeric and bulletproof coffee

'Breakfast is the most important meal of the day', and if you skip it, you're doomed to a life of diabetes, low metabolism, obesity, yada yada.

I wonder if hygiene standards might change for healthy people as we start to understand more about the role bacteria plays in our health - especially when it comes to children.

(Obviously not talking about babies, sick or immunocompromised people)

Superfoods will lose their elevated status (and inflated prices) to become know as food or ingredients once again.

Everything in moderation, as a PP poster said.

I'd like the careful counting to go. I think it makes us think about food too much, and then start to crave it.

I really think the sugar demonisation will do a backtrack.

Especially the replacement of it with fake substitutes.

And even more so the replacement of it with fake substitutes that is hidden on the packaging unless you read the full ingredients list

The sugar things as it stands puts an apple or orange in the same category as white sugar.

I've just come from Tesco's and I noticed a big change in the fresh meat aisle, I'm sure it used to be bothe sides of the full aisle, now its confines to half of one side ((doesn't include chicken) - sadly it looks like it has been replaced by readymeals which is now both sides of a full aisle.

I think Michael Pollan’s advice to

Eat food
Not too much
Mostly plants

will stand the rest of time. Whole foods that our Great Grandparents would recognise rather than pre-packaged stuff with unrecognisable ingredients. It’s a shame there’s so much conflicting, complicated around because it seems to me it’s there to make people money rather than to make us healthier. And knowing what to eat is one thing, sticking to it is entirely another in our current food environment!

Not nutrition but I'm waiting for HIIT sessions as a form of exercise to be debunked. Yes of course we need to get our heart rate up for xyz hours a week but the rapid acceleration over and over is going to be shown to be not a good idea (I could be wrong but I can see it coming )

I can clearly remember when the 'right' way to eat was the rosemary Conley type diet - low fat basically but plenty of whole meal bread, pasta and potatoes. I can actually see a swing towards this again in the future.

I follow a high fat diet right now but I also truly believe that the best all round is just bloody moderation. Some fats, some carbs, veg , fruit, bread etc. And the high protein thing will probably be proven to be a no no too

I have just been into Tesco.

The changes are not good.

They have got rid of my beetroot juice I buy weekly. And the hummus (usually get from Lidl but forgot this week) now is described as Moroccan Hummous and tastes like someone has added a tablespoon of curry powder to each pot and it has a gritty texture.

Absolutely awful.

Upset because I used to get everything from Lidl and Tesco in the same town but now will have to drive in the opposite direction to get normal hummous and beetroot juice. They seem to have upped there own brand juice drinks. Not the Orange or Apple juices but the ones that contain a lot of sugar.

I am sure they have said they are going to emulate Lidl and Aldi but I don’t think filling the store with overpriced ready meals and sugary drinks is emulating Lidl

autism will be discovered to be several different conditions with different causes when they do more genetic testing

Ehlers-Danlos will be discovered as not being as rare as they think. (that has recently been subdivided into 13 plus sorts)

there will be several conditions that are found to be linked.

Think theyll realise how damaging sweeteners are.

Intermittent fasting. At least for women.

Very low carb diets. Especiallg those that also advice no legumes and no whole grains.

Detox teas. (Is that a diet advice or more of a trend?)

A guy I’m friends with on FB who is a personal trainer has recently started advocating a “meat only” diet - steaks for breakfast slathered in butter, that kind of thing. Plates of raw mince. Every post is accompanied with all sorts of claims about the benefits such as clearing skin, helping arthritis, helping “reduce” autism (he initially said it cured autism and arthritis but has changed that now). He reckons most people can’t digest vegetables and it makes them ill. Interested to see if this becomes a wide spread thing and if so how long it lasts - sounds like bollocks to me, and I eat meat every day so it’s not like I’m anti-meat.

In fairness, ketogenic diets can help inflammatory arthritis: there's evidence from a recent clinical study in the US where they gave participants the main ketone produced by the ketogenic diet and discovered it helped reduce the inflammation by targeting IL16 and IL17 - the targets of some of the very expensive biologic medications people with RA and PsA often have to take. No good for osteoarthritis, obviously.

Certainly, this study has my rheumatologist quite excited, because it mirrors the experience of a number of her patients who have followed a ketogenic diet for weight loss purposes, and stuck to it because it put their arthritis into remission as well.

@GrumpyInsomniac

Horses for courses?
I'm not disputing that certain diets may benefit people with particular conditions.

But population surveys (particularly in regard to longevity) don't seem to direct us towards keto. It seems a bit trendy to me personally...

Anyhow, I'm not an expert and admittedly don't follow any kind of diet myself. Well, except the "let's try to stick to (mostly...) wholefoods and avoid (to a certain extent) processed food and sugar" - diet

@YaelMarielle I was simply saying that there is some evidence to support keto helping inflammatory arthritis. Nothing more. Your friend's diet seems extreme even to someone who's familiar with the keto diet: and that diet is far from trendy considering Atkins first started publicising his version back in the 1980s.

I think there is probably no one diet that will necessarily suit everybody, because our metabolic rate varies, some people have autoimmune conditions, others allergies and intolerances, and all the rest of it.

I don't eat complex carbs like pasta or spuds, nor sugar outside of naturally occurring in fruit and veg, because I see a real difference in my fibromyalgia if I don't stick to that. Other people would struggle if they didn't have spuds or pasta or rice with their main meal. So for me, the biggest mistake is probably that everyone should follow the same guidelines beyond a blanket "don't eat more than you need to feel sated".