Hi,
I saw your Instagram post about oils. My practical problem is that some of the younger people in my household, who are old enough to cook for the family, follow various sketchy TikTok “doctors". They’re now convinced that significant amounts of butter and beef tallow, along with mountains of meat, are perfectly healthy, while vegetable oils should be viewed with suspicion. Institutions like the WHO, whose advice is basically to keep saturated fat around 10% of calories or less, are apparently corrupt and clueless. And I’m hopelessly naïve for choosing more conventional sources.
Heart disease runs in my family, and I also had a colleague who went all-in on extreme keto and died before 40 with severely clogged arteries. Apparently anecdotes only count when they support the preferred conclusion.
To be fair, apart from these particular dietary ideas, they’re much more health-conscious than I was at their age.
I run into this more generally too: say that healthy eating is mostly half a page of boring basics from a public health website, plus sensible calorie and macro management, and people’s eyes glaze over as if you’ve clearly missed the point of life. I don’t think public-health guidelines are gospel, but they’re still the best default we have. And I doubt dietary alchemy unlocks some hidden level of health the basics somehow missed. When I try to explain how all that science ultimately boils down to that half-page, I’m treated as if I’m mildly simple.
So how do you get through to people who take their health advice from assorted online gurus without immediately being dismissed as a brainwashed establishment sheep?
Thanks for all the great content, the strength templates, and especially the nuance. They’ve taken me a long way.