Hey, stupid, wanna lose some weight?

Should you listen to nutrition experts or rather look at them and those who follow them?

Here are ways of evaluating nutrition experts:

1. Look at them. If they look pudgy, then you should know what their advice is worth.

2. Look at people who have followed their advice past their 40s. (If someone eats stupidly, say by following the FDA’s Food Pyramid, then in their 30s they begin to experience signs of insulin resistance, which get more obvious as they age.)

3. Look at people who follow the experts’ advice but don’t exercise a lot anymore. Examples are retired athletes who greatly reduce the volume and intensity of their exercises. If they then balloon like some retired gymnasts or drop dead of heart attacks, you know what their nutrition knowledge did for them.

Youth and intense exercise offset many effects of wrong nutrition (no, not “poor nutrition”), but as one ages and/or reduces the amount of exercise, the effects of eating wrong come through. And what is unhealthy in the long-term must be reducing the athlete’s potential in the short-term.