I know what you mean - the more you know, the less you know. I commented on this in ‘The Game Changers’ thread, but I’ll repeat my thoughts here.
I’m a biologist (a plant geneticist), but have no training in nutrition whatsoever. As such, I don’t make any claims about having specialist knowledge and freely admit to being way out of my depth when it comes to many aspects of nutritional science. However, I do have many years experience of reading, analysing, interpreting, and critiquing scientific literature. I understand the requirements for a well designed scientific study, and the statistical rigour required to be able to draw meaningful interpretations from experimental results.
I think that one of the reasons that the topic of nutrition causes so much debate, it that is is very hard (perhaps impossible) to devise a properly controlled experiment. There are too many unknown variables. Any collection of humans used in a study is going to be extremely diverse. Even if every detail of their life during the experimental period could be controlled, their past lives will have been very different. Aspects such as lifestyle, activity levels, age, ethnicity, stress levels, will all have confounding effects on any results. Add on to this, that the differences in any measured variable are possibly quite small, and it makes it almost impossible to come up with any unequivocal result.
You then have the problem of extrapolating health guidelines from any significant results that you do find. Let’s say, for example, that a study finds a significant reduction in blood LDL cholesterol levels after following diet A vs. diet B. Let’s pretend that we are 100% sure of that result, and that all confounding factors have been properly accounted for. So we have proved, beyond doubt, that diet A results in lower LDL cholesterol than diet B. To get from that to the statement that diet A is better, we have to then prove that lower LDL cholesterol actually gives a health benefit (not as straightforward as it may seem). We also have to account for any other differences - e.g. does the lower LDL come at the cost of higher HDL, or some other change, that has equally bad (or even worse) health outcomes. Even if we somehow manage to do all of the above and can state with 100% certainty that diet A is better than diet B, then what about diets C or D?
This is the crux of the problem. People want to be told “if you follow this diet then you are doing the healthiest possible thing”. That’s just not possible. And what is the healthiest diet for person 1 might not be for person 2. It’s this, for me, that makes the topic of nutrition so fascinating, but also so frustrating.
Given all of the above, my personal philosophy is for choosing your diet is as follows:
- Do some reading (as much or as little as you like, but the more the better)
- Decide what makes sense to you - which studies do you think are best designed, which results do you believe, what intuitively makes sense?
- Self-experiment.
It’s the last point that I think is key. Try the diet that you think is going to be healthiest and that can work for you (I’d rather shave a few years off my life-expectancy and/or not achieve my maximum athletic potential than constantly be trying to follow a diet that makes me miserable). Give it at least a couple of months to allow for adaptations to your new diet (unless your health deteriorates or you find it unsustainable). Do you feel better? How is your mood? How are your energy levels? How is your recovery?
It took me many different diet types to come to my current one (vegan, leaning towards whole-food plant-based). I may change diet again, but currently I don’t see any reason to (and the environmental and animal-welfare factors are further motivation to stay vegan). For me, this diet works. I have more energy than ever, I’ve seen the first FTP increase in a long time, my mood is far better (I have a history of depression), I’m definitely recovering between training sessions better, and I don’t feel like I’m depriving myself at all (in fact, I’m enjoying food more than ever). However, I am always willing to reconsider and should I find that my diet starts impacting on my health, mood, or performance then I will look at changing it.
Having picked a diet, I do think it is important to do some reading to try and ensure you’re getting all of the essential micronutrients and looking at ways to incorporate foods into your diet to enable this. Maybe you will need/want to use supplements (I only take one 1000 ug vitamin B12 supplement, twice a week).