Nutrition is a contentious subject, mostly because we still don’t really understand it.
Human nutrition is extraordinarily complex — every person’s metabolism, microbiome, genetics, and lifestyle interact differently with what they eat. Controlled studies are hard to run over meaningful time spans, most data rely on self-reported diets, and confounding variables (like activity, sleep, or socioeconomic factors) are difficult to isolate. As a result, much of what we “know” about nutrition rests on weak or contradictory evidence, which is why new findings often reverse old ones and why experts rarely agree for long.
The thing that fascinates me, though, is something we do know: starting around 50 years ago, obesity and related diseases began skyrocketing. Something changed. Was it the industrialization of food, larger portions, increasingly sedentary lifestyles — or a bit of each? Or was it something else entirely?
I’m partial to Mark Schatzker’s theory of nutritive mismatch — the idea that the foods we now eat confuse our metabolism with terrible consequences. But whatever the cause, my aim is to eat the kinds of food a person would have around mid-century. That means, as much as possible, single-ingredient whole foods and dishes I make myself from them. As for packaged foods, I avoid those that contain ingredients I wouldn’t find in my kitchen.
As for how much I eat, I basically try to stay in caloric balance — eating roughly as many calories as I expend in a day. To do this, I log my weight and food daily (using MacroFactor). That’s necessary because, in the modern food environment, it’s easy to be surprised by the nutritional content of what you’re eating. As Schatzker points out, when there were only strawberries and no strawberry-flavored anything, you didn’t really have to watch what you ate.
Finally, to support my exercise goals I aim to eat at least a gram of protein per pound of body weight. To support my sleep, I strictly limit how much caffeine and alcohol I consume.
As long as I don’t bring processed foods into the house, I don’t find it difficult to maintain this diet. When I’m out, I don’t worry too much about what I eat, though I do watch how much.
Last updated October 24, 2025
