Fad diet the enemy of food lovers

NOW that we have eliminated killer fat from our diet, will the nutrition industry kindly tell us what we are actually allowed to eat?

Picture: Supplied

NOW that we have eliminated killer fat from our diet, followed all the chirpy advice to cut sugar, and are about to embark on a campaign to remove proteins from our plates in an attempt to live forever, will the nutrition industry kindly tell us what we are actually allowed to eat?

Because at this point, by a process of elimination it appears anyone wishing to make it through middle age does not have a lot of options. Perhaps boiled beans three times a day, a sashimi-sized bit of poached chicken breast on alternate Saturday nights and an annual rasher of bacon at Christmas might avoid all risk.

Recent headlines suggest that regular cheeseburger consumption is as foolhardy as cycling the wrong way down the Pacific Highway without a helmet. The news was prompted by a study by one Dr Valter Longo, who besides sounding like a Bond villain tells us that a diet containing more than 20 per cent red meats, milk, and cheese could do just as much harm as a pack-a-day smoking habit.

Dr Longo, it should be noted, is something of a zealot on these issues; he reportedly skips lunch every day in a belief that it will increase his lifespan. Fans of this meal, especially in its longer varieties, may well ask, “why bother?”

Anyone with a degree of skepticism and a memory longer than that of a goldfish will be forgiven for suspecting that this suggested low-protein diet will go the way of the high-protein diet, which not long ago was trumpeted as the sure-fire way to weight loss and a long, happy life.

Because beyond just playing with our protein intakes, we have in previous years and decades seen all manner of food fad, each one touted as the solution to all our woes, filling not just the bellies of their adherents but also a need for some sort of guiding hand as well.

Many diets demand cult-like adherence to a set of dietary rules as complicated as any faith, providing nearly the same assurance of rewards for sticking to it and punishment (including a fair bit of guilt) if one strays from the path.

Yet from fruitarianism to celebrity diets to best-selling diet book authored by “expert” doctors (who have no trouble contradicting one another) the programs keep on selling. One recent fad, the eat-like-a-caveman Paleo diet, has taken off wildly with cafes and cookbooks launching weekly to explain how our Neolithic ancestors had it all over us in the health stakes. Oddly, however, few of the diet’s adherents are willing to live like a caveman, hunt like a caveman, enjoy caveman-style healthcare, or date like a caveman. Wonder why?

All of this high-profile faddism can have real and negative consequences. When it comes to the latest “advice” about protein, and for many people who have found that a high-protein diet is in fact the best way to keep their own cholesterol levels and weight in check, the new advice could well do more harm than good.

Human nature loves an enemy and abhors a vacuum. In politics as on the plate, an enemy is needed, and in an age when the big global threats are scary, amorphous, and no longer easy to define and pin down it is only natural that people seek easily-identified villains elsewhere (thus fat or sugar or protein). Where once we worried about reds under the bed (who, on any fair reading of history, were in fact trying to do us harm), now the threat is a sirloin under the grill (which, properly treated, only wants to make us happy).

In the end, the best nutrition advice may be the easiest: Eat good food that tastes good.

James Morrow writes about food and culture at prickwithafork.com