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Comment by unreal37 | Hacker News Reader

You should read the book "Wheat Belly". That will bust that myth about grains and fruits for you.

You missed my point..for every 1 scientist that says "fruits are bad", I'll find you 1 or more that says "eat more fruits!" That this scientist's views comes in book form doesn't change anything, and whatever graphs and studies he uses will only confuse me because someone saying the exact opposite will use equally impressive graphs and studies.

Watching nutrition experts is like watching economist...they can each prove that they are right, even though they are making mutually exclusive claims. No doubt they mostly all have good intentions...I don't begrudge them their enthusiasm.

While I won't claim that wheat is some magical food, no book will change my view (based on what I've seen), that I'm better off eating wheat and fruits than KFC.

Agree it's a minefield. And it's pretty surprising that the human digestive system isn't better charted.

To me it seems that the modern human diet is the most peculiarly unatural thing. It might also be the recipe for human intelligence and longer living.

I'm worried about the adverse effects of some foods.

Bowel cancer is somewhat preventative and food related: http://cancerhelp.cancerresearchuk.org/type/bowel-cancer/abo...

US News & World report does an annual survey of dieticians: http://health.usnews.com/best-diet

Unsurprisingly, those dieticians overwhelmingly say that meat-heavy diets like paleo (ranked 25th out of 25) are horrific. The idea that there is some controversy about this is mostly due to people on HN without much formal education.

This blog post presents some interesting criticisms of the book "Wheat Belly":

http://noglutennoproblem.blogspot.com/2012/03/wheat-belly-bu...

It sounds like the book often misrepresents the research that it cites.

It seems that the only real error made by Wheat Belly's author was bending the study by claiming its subjects were all obese with celiac disease. Apart from this, the comments contains many anecdotal responses from people who have dropped not only gluten, but all grain from their diet and had positive results. Moreover, take into account the blog's author who has published three books circulating around gluten-free foods -- something that Wheat Belly advises the reader to jettison altogether.

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