@HuumanCreed, as you can see, you can talk to a dozen people about nutrition and get 13 opinions. Find a nutritionist if you have medical issues and need to eat around them.
My wife has cholesterol/heart/diabetic issues in her family, and after watching several of her family members die too young with missing feet or other really horrific ailments, I was able to impress upon her that she needed to change inherited habits. On my side of the family, we're generally a (regrettably) long-lived group of unpleasant people who are plagued by dementia, Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, thyroid issues, and a pretty good bit of colon cancer.
What gets lost in the noise is:
- There's no single "Holy Grail" diet that we've discovered to make all of the people, all the way healthy, all the time.
- Peaks and valleys to the landscape are legion, and the Standard American Diet is practically custom-made to kill you young, which is why it seems people can swap to almost any diet and report life-changing improvements. Go vegan, go carnivore, go Mediterranean, go Soylent Green...it's not hard to do better, especially if you couple diet change with other healthy changes like quitting substances (legal or otherwise), getting more sleep, exercising more, living more intentionally...the list goes on.
- People are different, and what's healthy for one person may not be ideal for the other. Somewhat simplistic but easy examples include nut allergies, lactose intolerance, ALDH2 deficiency, or Alpha-gal syndrome. Just because I consume pistachios, whole milk, Guinness, and NYS and am perfectly healthy doesn't mean that everybody else should eat what I eat.
You should find a nutritionist that's well-regarded, preferably one who is knowledgeable about your situation, communicate with them honestly and often, and ignore everybody else.
I have really gone whole-ham into cooking in the last couple of years. I've read more cooking books than outdoor books this year, and have dropped hunting related subscriptions in favor of Masterclass, America's Test Kitchen, and the like. I have personally found that really "getting into" food and taking control of the cooking has made it actually more enjoyable to eat "healthy" than to eat out or eat junk. Instead of "having" to cook, I now "get to" cook, and I thoroughly enjoy making new dinners and remaking and incrementally improving old ones. I've gotten my wife hooked on stuff she never used to eat, like arugula and salmon. We eat a much more diverse diet because I'm "playing" with food and seeking new things to try and enjoy instead of just "grabbing whatever."
And while you should trust your nutritionist over me, my personal suspicion is that the current nutritional trends are sponsored by Big Ag, which really doesn't want to change gears and would instead prefer to keep churning out subsidized soybeans and corn to feed to beef steers and our fat butts because that's a well-established, comfortable, and profitable business model. Call me a soy boy, but I get a kick and a half out of the carnivore thing. Eat a steak if you want a steak, but be a big boy and eat your vegetables too. And knowing the difference between farro, quinoa, and bulghur and having a wine preference makes you more appealing to women, not less.
