May 3, 2010-

Even well-meaning and well-researched dieticians, doctors, and experts can be completely wrong when it comes to diet advice. We know this because "the way to eat" changes all the time. People just repeat what they learned in school, or think they have a handle on it because they are thin themselves, so what they do must be the right thing.

The most famous example for Americans would be the infamous "Five Food Groups," which were beat into everyone's heads in school for years, but it was nothing but bad advice and food industry propaganda. Another example was the "Low Fat" craze a few years ago, which we now know is a disaster.

The most annoying and lasting of diet myths is that all calories are just calories, and all you need to know is reduce them until you get the right weight. It is typical for people pushing this nonsense to use incorrect math when calculating calories by weight, because their approach does not take metabolism into account. They can literally be off by 50% or more, and that is inexcusable to pass off as science.

Let's take a few examples and look in more detail:

Five Food Groups-

I was going to write up something on this, but this video from Dr Mark Hyman does a better job...

The Food Pyramid and Milk