What I Learned (and Unlearned) Reading 10 Books on Nutrition

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2025/01/13/what-i-learned-and-unlearned-reading-10-books-on-nutrition/ 

The 3-Minute Summary of What I Learned (and Unlearned)

In terms of concision, it’s hard to beat Michael Pollan’s overall eating advice:

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Despite the complexity and contention of the underlying research, most advice for eating well is pretty basic:

• Eat more whole foods.
• Eat more fruits and vegetables.
• Eat more fiber.
• Eat a range of different food types and foods within each type.
• Eat more whole grains.
• Go easy on the refined grains, added sugars, processed meat and saturated fat.

A seventh recommendation, though not universally agreed to, might be “Try to eat a bit more protein, particularly from plant and marine sources.”

But, in addition to these fairly uncontroversial ideas, I also found some repeated ideas that surprised me somewhat:

1. Egg yolks aren’t bad for you. Dietary cholesterol has a pretty minimal effect on blood cholesterol. Egg yolks famously have a lot of cholesterol, so they were unnecessarily vilified.
2. Too much saturated fat is still bad for you. Trans fats are worse, of course, but most sources recommend swapping solid fats in your diet, like lard and butter, for healthy oils to reduce the risk of heart disease.
3. Carbs aren’t bad for you. Carbs have replaced fat as the dietary villain of our age, but carbs are the body’s preferred energy source. Unrefined grains and carbs from fruit and vegetables are a boon for health.
4. Most additives in food are safe. Whole foods are good, of course, but the belief that small amounts of preservatives or chemical food additives are the source of ill health seems largely unfounded. Processing strips nutrients and reformulates foods to make them easier to overconsume, but the additives themselves are largely harmless.
5. Coffee and chocolate are healthy. In moderation, coffee appears to be a net positive for health. Chocolate, particularly dark chocolate, seems to be good as well. Chocolate has a lot of calories, so it’s easy to overconsume, but the type of saturated fat present in cacao isn’t harmful.