Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "Today I Found Out"
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He did a great job, but arguably the misinterpretation of results of his work is exactly why I don't watch TV anymore. Given that I don't live in the US, but in Brazil we have a similar system that has dominated since TV's inception.
It has pretty much guaranteed that TV content never changes, and remains pure sensationalistic garbage or empty brainless entertainment through and through. The soccer matches, the soap operas, the crap tv shows, the horrible comedy shows that have been repeating jokes for over 3 decades now, the sensationalistic news... you watch TV for a week, you've watched everything you need to watch for your entire life, and possibly for the entire history of brazilian TV.
It's not the data though, it's what tv conglomerates do with it. If all you care about is catering to high ratings, the content automatically excludes anything else worth of value for society, education and culture. It gets trapped into a routine that dares not evolve or risk anything new.
Because if people wants to watch the cultural equivalent of paint drying and a front loading washing machine, that's all that TV is gonna provide.
What you often end up with due to how mainstream works, the tyranny of the majority, is regurgitated crap for people to consume without any mastication, if you get what I mean.
Despite all it's trappings and problems, I always hold a positive outlook on the Internet. It has saved me from living a zombie life. Well, at least to a point.
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Great episode guys, keep doing those!
I actually had a short stint of being a super taster by accident... if you are moderately allergic to something you can do it too, though I doubt you'll want to. :P
Long story short, I'm allergic to cats and I stayed during a month in a place where the air was saturated with the allergen (finely powered cat saliva). Symptons started with a sore throat on week 2 all the way to fever, headaches, swollen hands and feet, couple of visits to the ER, shortness of breath, sleepless nights, lots of anti allergy medicine (which solves nothing when you are practically submerged in your allergen), a feeling of being pricked by a thousand needles at times (skin/touch hypersensitivity) and general pain.
One side effect I had was a very accute sense of taste... probably my entire system panicking and acting up.
Here's how things tasted in comparison to my normal sense: anything with sugar, specially stuff like Coke, had a sugary, burnt, overpowering taste. Kinda horrible. Like eating the juice of a burnt cake.
Everything with sweeteners on it became too bitter to bare. A little salt was too much salt. Industrialized, pre-packaged stuff didn't match my taste anymore, everything was overpowering.
On the other hand, stuff like fruits, salads, pure fruit juices, food with no seasoning, bread with juuust a bit of butter and stuff like that became waaay more bearable. I'm not really huge on those, but they suddenly became plenty tasty.
Tea without anything added, even coffee which I thought was going to be too bitter but was actually nice. Regular drip coffee though, not sure if espresso would go down.
Kinda great for your health I guess. It was also an interesting experience because I think my mom tastes things exactly like that by her preferences and how she describes the taste of things. Eats a whole ton of veggies and fruits, does not like red meat, does not like sodas or chocolate, avoids processed food... it was quite surprising to feel a bit how she tastes things - it puts things in perspective.
Not sure if this is exactly like being a super taster, but more like having a very accute sense.
I'd actually love being able to keep my sense of taste that way without all the horrible side effects because I'd be forced to eat healthier... xD Alas, as soon as I came back home, everything went back to normal. But since this includes all the horrible allergic effects, I can't really complain. :P
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Small correction: Pachinkos were never at any point the only place you could smoke in public.... not sure where script writers came up with that.
Pachinkos were famously thick with smoke when it was allowed, because they are usually inside closed opaque windows (or windowless) buildings that have the same effect of casinos - to obscure the passage of time for players. :P
And so, with little ventilation and tight packed space with tons of smokers, you got the smoker fog.
But smoking indoors got forbiden very very recently, being allowed only at designated spaces.
Just as an example, on my trip there back in 2018, I still found plenty of restaurants, bars, cafes and whatnot that still had enclosed smoker areas. I also went there in 2007, no smoking ban at all that I can remember of back then.
The general rule for closed spaces though was having separate areas for smokers.
But smoking outdoor was already outlawed in 2018, with designated corners and booths popping out. In some places they were fully enclosed spaces with ventilation and filtration, in others they were just signs put close to cigarette butt trashcans, open space, no boundaries. I imagine it was the transition period... not sure how it's working now. But I still spotted people disrespecting it here and there.... japanese people, not tourists.
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True story: Power Rangers was all the rage back when I was a teen, but despite being a fan of other super sentai shows when I was a kid, I really didn't like it. :P
I was a fan of shows like Jaspion, Changeman, Flashmen, Super Cop, Black Kamen Rider and a bunch of others, but Power Rangers always felt a bit cheap and weird to me. It was the acting and the mix with teen college years stuff that I just couldn't take.
But it was a huge hit here in Brazil much like it was in the US, so reruns were on all the freaking time.
One day I was channel surfing, got right in this scene when the green ranger was giving this rallying speech not to give up or something, he got into this inspirational macho pose where he got his sword and shoved into the ground... it was only a few frames but you could clearly see the sword bending like a piece of cardboard before the scene quickly cut off to something else. Back then I didn't even know the show was made out of recycled japanese super sentai stuff, but you could clearly see how much the production quality lowered whenever the american actors were on scene, no offence. xD Later when I found out about all that, I went... oooh, this explains a whole lot. :P
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This is something that most people don't seem to understand, and no, Japan not covering history is not just because of "shame", that's just what detractors and a very biased purview usually say. This idea is not only overly simplistic, it lacks self criticism too.
History in school classes, as well as geography, and other subjects related to the nation you live in all have a patriotic foundation. The original purpose of those subjects was to place students inside the cultural context they live in, and to foster a sense of patriotism for the country they are citizens off. And it's easy to understand why - history, geography, geopolitics among other areas of study in schools all started during periods of time that the world was in between or actively during wars. Often, those were tools for military recruitment, believe it or not. Not always, but several times during our history.
Overtime, these classes have evolved to include world history, but it's usually separated between national, and then "the rest", often being a very unbalanced coverage of the rest, usually other countries that matter somehow to yours - be it because of diplomatic relationships, cultural proximity, recent events and wars, etc.
Given that, you can imagine how it becomes basically impossible to cover the entire history of all the countries in the world entirely, with the same allocation of time you have to cover the entire history of one country - yours.
Further, as those areas of studies tends to be the most contaminated by politics, you will always have a huge bias behind it all. There are big differences and gaps when it comes to history and geography when you take it from capitalist countries versus socialist countries, former allied countries vs axis countries, current standings, side of war, alignment, ideologies, religious interferrence, etc etc.
Now, to deviate from the content, but something that always comes up.
People often question why do japanese schools don't cover war crimes of japanese imperial military past in countries like Korea and China, because Japan is often an easy target for these kinds of questionings.
But you don't really see many countries recognizing and teaching kids and young adults at school of war crimes commited by their own military forces. It's either about other country's military forces, or it's treated like a passing note. If you had extensive history classes covering war crimes commited by your country against other countries, let me know - genuine proposal, I'm not being facetious here. And yes, if your country had any military war role in any other country, you can bet there were war crimes.
Which, just so people know, history books in Japan do cover the country's role, surrender, and change of political system during WWII. It's just not extensive, or at least not as extensive as victim countries would like it to be, because of course it wouldn't.
The politics adopted by post WWII Japan, agreed upon by constitution and by both sides involved, is that Japan would become a peaceful nation. An artifact of that is that in Japan, topics such as war are treated with distance, and portrayed as something people should never seek again. I'm sure anyone who has been in Japan knows this. The peace ideology is spread out in culture, museums, memorials, etc.
Something that people always puts up as counterpoint to this is that, hey, Germany teaches the evils of Nazi Germany, etc. See, it's easier to talk and teach about Nazi Germany, as a defeated axis country, paradoxically because of Nazi propaganda. You target and shame the ideology, the party, not the country as a whole. Nazists were evil, but germans don't necessarily have to feel ashamed of it, unless they are nazists themselves.
This gives enough distancing between "the evil" that was the Nazi party, Hitler, as an example of what german students should not strive for, but without eliminating the possibility of being a current Germany patriot citizen. This also applies to other axis nations, because lots of them adopted a similarly radical ideology to justify war crimes. In Italy it was Mussolini and the italian Fascist movement.
For Japan, this is a bit harder to do, because as a country, Japan still has an emperor, there are no well defined political or ideological lines to cut ties with, and many of the justified complaints of foreign nations are not easily resolved.
Give you an example, the polemic around the Rising Sun flag. I don't think most people shouting about it realizes this, but the often revilled Rising Sun flag has been in use in Japan to represent either the nation or the military or both, since the 7th century, up to today. Yes, today. It's been continuously in use for over a millenia and a half, well above any other flag in the world.
The Rising Sun flag currently represents the JSDF - Japanese Self Defense Force. Look it up, I'll wait. In fact, you'll be able to see it being used in military exercises in conjunction with several allied nations, including the US, as recently as a couple of years ago at least. The navy uses the Rising Sun Flag, ground forces and air forces uses variants of it.
It's justified for korean and chinese victims to feel offended by it because when the japanese imperial army invaded, they were holding those flags.
A large part of the outrage culture that arises everytime the flag is used in some japanese culture export - like manga, games, and anime - is misleaded and misinformed at best, manipulative and political at worse. Because the flag and symbology has never been not in use. The outrage comes both from political manneuvering, and from foreign ignorance. It became "a thing" because of how much more connected the world has become with the Internet and all that, so it might seem a new problem to the eyes of some people, but it actually isn't.
Different than the Nazy party iconography, that had flags, uniforms, insignias, and whatnot that represented the party's ideology, the japanese military forces of those times were holding flags that historically represented Japan as a nation, not a specific ideology or party. Imagine something like WWII germany using the basic German flag instead of the Nazi party's flag - only that the Rising Sun flag is about 1000 years older than the oldest German Empire flag.
And so, it becomes much harder to solve this conundrum. It's also why most japanese people still don't see a problem there - the flag is not a symbol for a specific attrocity or period of time, military action or war, it's the nation's flag, period, since forever.
It's in the name. Land of the Rising Sun was how Japan as a nation has been referred to since it's very foundations, by chinese diplomats, and thus a flag that is a very basic artistic rendition of a rising sun is what it translates to.
Similarly, western tourists often have the cultural shock of seeing the Manji symbol used to represent buddhist temples everywhere in Japan, looking exactly like a reversed Swastika. It's been there times before WWII and the Nazi party, and it continues to be there in current use. The symbol predates Nazism, it has origins in Buddhism and Hinduism. No one there sees manji as reverence to nazi ideology.
Which all turns to - do victims of japanese imperial military forces have a right to feel offended or scared and scarred by the Rising Sun flag as a symbol? Of course they do. The attrocities were no joke, it remains some of the worst human rights violations en masse of recent history, as bad as the Nazi party and Italian Fascist party commited.
Does this necessarily translates to Japan and japanese culture being forced to erase a historical patriotic symbol from it's entire cultural and historical production? I don't think so too.
At the same time, I also don't think Japan has any right to have revisionist politicians. That one is what really crosses the line for me. And yes, the current governmental party (former prime minister Shinzo Abe and current one are from the same party) has some shady non declared ties with revisionist groups, which is plenty bad. They are not, afaik, openly and declared revisionist themselves though, and contrary to what you may have heard, the japanese government continues having a stance of recognizing it's war crimes and that it was in the wrong side of WWII on every single diplomatic visit and in relevant dates, to this day - it's documented, you can look it up.
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May sound like coincidences, but if you think back at the time, right in the middle of Baby Boomer generation (for Dennis I mean), it does make some sense.... well, apart from the exact naming, which is very much a remarkable coincidence.
All of the greatest most famous enduring sunday cartoons empathized with the happenings of the generations of the times, and some particular ones like Dennis, Calvin and a few others put a mix of angst, comedy, nostalgia and a few other elements right there, for dads and kids to enjoy.
Probably has a lot to do with the readership of newspapers at the time... which I guess lots of people nowadays wouldn't be too familiar with unless they are as old as me or older. xD
Everyone read newspapers, specially dads, and then kids would always take a peek at the sunday cartoons. It was the main source of information that was guaranteed to have the most readership. So it makes sense for the theme to be around that.
Garfield for pet owners, Dilbert for white-collar office jobs in the 80s, Beetle Bailey back in Vietnam War... they almost kinda define some of the ethos of the time, the stuff people thought and were worried about, the collective consciousness in a light hearted way. The more general and broad the topic was, the more reach it had.
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I'm not sure how to present this delicately so as not to offend or incense the fury of others, so I'll just say this is a personal opinion of a 3rd generation japanese descendent that has looked a lot on the culture of Japan, and has been talking a lot about this subject for a long time, and I'm sorry if it offends some people, but that's not the intention.
But I'm not japanese... I'm descendant 3rd removed, and I'm also not a scholar or specialist, just your regular armchair nerd that spent too much time reading, and tryiing to understand better. :P So don't take it too seriously, and don't use my pov solely as a source.
Ok, here we go. This subject is extremely complex and no single article, video or paper will really portray what really happens there... it involves everything from how politics is viewed in Japan to how school works there, to culture and societal values, to a ton of other stuff that is largely unknown in western countries.
Not talking much about evil deeds your country did in the past is a common thing in how history is taught in almost all countries.
Germany might be an exception in regards to WWII, but it's just that, an exception. It's also an easier one to do, interestingly enough, because the Nazi party defined itself so clearly as a propaganda tool of sorts, so it's easier to separate what the party did, from what Germans should do.
War crimes are horrible and should never be overlooked, but just as an exercise in perspective, try searching a bit about the war crimes your country has commited in war, and think how much you heard about them in school. You might be surprised about how much you didn't know, or perhaps you already learned about it after school, because you are in a priviledged position to look for this information about your own country... but not so much on others.
You also see how hard it is to separate bad actions from good actions when you have historical figures that were founding fathers and key leaders, but which also commited attrocities in the past.
On the other side of things, people living in western countries must also understand that the way WWII is portrayed in our schools is also extremely extremely skewed towards a heavily romanticized, American centric understanding of the war. The dimension we give it in comparison to other wars and other tragedies comes from a western centric culture.
Perhaps to the point it makes it hard to understand how or why other cultures can care much less about all of this. You grew up with a constant reinforcement on how WWII was important, how big it was, and how it should guide you around a whole ton of subjects.
Particularly in schools, it's also heavily influenced by the Cold War, reason why you don't get much about the role USSR and post-war communist countries had in WWII.
The way certain countries sees world wars and the importance they attribute to them tend to vary quite a lot...
When you see weird cases about asian countries (not only Japan) using Nazi iconography for the most ridiculous stuff (like a bar theme, or a pop idol group uniform), this is when you see a glimpse of the difference in importance different cultures make out of events like WWII.
Even considering more modern retractions, revisions, and retellings without the heavy romantization of books, movies and whatnot showed just a few decades ago, the way western countries and particularly the US views, culturally, the WWII is still very much black and white, very much from the winning side.
Heck, I don't even live in the US, but because my own country's culture and history is heavily influenced by the US, I also get how skewed it is.
If you don't live in the US, think back to history classes in school and what the history books tell you about wars your country had with neighboring nations and whatnot. 9 times out of 10, you will have either a skewed version where your country was right, or very small passing mention of how it was wrong and did bad stuff.
Considering it's a different country than yours with a different culture and perspective of wars, do you feel entitled to dictate how many pages a history book of that country has to dedicate on a war you find important? How many? How many pages your country's history books dedicates on the mdidle east? Latin american wars? Asian conflicts? African?
Give you a personal example, I live in Brazil, I barely heard in school about the war with Paraguay, a neighboring country, despite my hometown having a frontier with it. It was only later in life that I learned about the attrocities my country commited against our neighbors, how much damage was done there, how much of an uncalled for massacre it was.
And even then, it's often framed as a war that was forced upon us because our alliance with the United States. Which is also totally skewed. Sure, the US certainly might have had an influence on it, but it is totally Brazil's own fault for going for it. There is always this play on scapegoating and trying to paint yourself as a victim or not the main culprit.
If you are an American, have you ever heard about this?
Now, back to Japan and why I'm saying it's far more complicated than people think.
Contrary to most countries in the world, Japan has a history that goes back over two thousand years continuously, with not a whole lot of foreign contact.... or at least waaaay less foreign contact in comparison to even ancient european cultures.
If you can stop to imagine the difference this makes to a country's understanding of it's own history, in comparison to a country that was founded (or claimed) in the 17th century and onwards, do it. It's hard to imagine because it's quite an unique case.
Japan had some 150 years of warring states period when it was divided in several regions that were constantly at war. This period, as well as the unification of Japan is covered more extensively in japanese schools, and yet it is also heavily romanticized in japanese media.
Generally speaking, japanese education goes less on accuracy and discussion, and more about turning it into a cultural lesson. The general lesson on WWII, atomic bombs, war in general is to build a society around peace. You could say that not focusing much in WWII is denial, but you could also say that given the entire history of Japan, it's unproductive.
Ok, with this is mind, let's think a bit about WWII and Japan's involvement in it. While Germany had a more ideological approach to it, Japan came in with a more religious nationalistic centric one. The emperor was God, soldiers on a mission to expand japanese territory in obedience to their God.
The horrific cases of Nanjing Massacre and "Comfort Women" scandal, war crimes, and human experimentation that Simon mentioned happened in a context of World War II, but they actually don't quite line up perfectly (invasion of Korea was going on before WWII started)... because this was happening detached from being an Axis WWII thing, just a Japan militaristic colonization/invasion/expansion thing.
Which doesn't make it any better, but just to adjust the context and perspective because badly informed people might think Hitler was asking Japan to do these things. He didn't. Japan's decision to become an Axis country was much more about convenience rather than ideology. Of course there were ideologues and ultra nationalists in Japan and japanese government too, even the US had nazi supporters back at the time, but ultimately it had more to do with tensions regarding the USSR.
As some will know, Japan was, and still partially is, an extremely isolated culture. It still has a very uniform population to this day, and with this it tends to look much more on itself rather than externally when it comes to history.
The problem here is that with cultural, language and source barriers, for a very long time it was plenty hard for Japan, japanese people and by extention education to look significantly to other countries when it comes to history. You could say there wasn't much reason to do it too.
Foreigners who live there will know this well. It's not just about WWII, or whatever - in general, Japan just doesn't know much about the rest of the world, period. Which might sound extremely bad to a modern, affluent, cosmopolitan citizen of other countries nowadays, but again, you are coming from a very particular point of view - you can't expect a culture from another country to align with yours perfectly just because you think your culture is superior to others or something.
Reversing this, people should also see how much they really know about japanese history, culture, and society. Other than the superficial crap you were fed by international media coverage, I mean.
The more you look into japanese history, the more you hear on how japanese people see themselves and their own culture, the more you start getting that the way other countries chose to cover stories about Japan is just, if not more, biased than what people accuse japanese history books of being.
There is very often a layer of racism, a certain prejudice, a tokenization and fetishization, a seek for weirdness and otherness implied in international coverage articles that tells you something about how western countries chose to see Japan as a country and culture.
It starts becoming very hard to judge and criticize what is taught in a school in another culture when you start understanding all the biases that happen not only inside your country's own schools, but also in news coverage and supposedly serious documentaries for adults that your own country produces.
Ok, switching gears, let's talk a bit more about modern Japan, politics, and a few other things that this topic touches.
It's totally right that recently, some japanese school materials, posturing towards other countries, and some other stuff have been surfacing with revisionist and denialist tones. But do understand, this isn't the general japanese sentiment... it's politics.
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In case people didn't know, the recently resigned prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is a conservative politician with well known ties to an organization known to have a ultra-conservative, right-wing, far right posture.
So, even though political institutions in Japan are pretty strong to oppose certain lunacies coming from this organization, and even though Abe himself was very smart and careful not to enact policies on the extreme of the party, some stuff still always popped up.
Nippon Kaigi, the organization, has some pretty awful extreme views on politics. It's not all they are, but they got a pretty bad rep for some of their ideas. They are revisionist, with a posturing of denial regarding Nanjing Massacre, and that Comfort Women were just prostitutes during war times, which is patently false and as moronic and idiotic as holocaust denial. They are also in favor of return of militarization of Japan and reintroduction of firearms to citizens with constitution revision, general nationalism, even more revisionism of history, against LGBT and gender studies, against feminism, etc.
You know, your typical far right group, or something comparable to it.
Again, understand it's not exactly the same thing, but it's the closest cultural translation.
The difference is, Shinzo Abe, despite having links with this organization, wasn't completely stupid or populist. His politics didn't match up entirely with the organization's agenda.
Yes, he was in part the reason why the current crisis with South Korea came up, and he probably had his hand in trying to interfere in how japanese education works.
Thing is, be it because of other politicians, or because Abe was wise enough not to force Nippon Kaigi ideals into politics, the general philosophy of the party never quite caught on. From him directly the only thing I know is that he tried implementing a plan and policy for gender equality at work. There have also been considerable progress during his term regarding stuff like crime groups, suicide rates, and general work relations and rights.
He was also extremely diplomatic, reason why his links with the ultra conservative group sound kinda weird. He made significant progress towards making the relationship between Japan and China, and Japan and South Korea, become better over the years, depite recent problems. He has been on and off the prime minister position for over a decade, and despite recent spats, the overall results of his politics has been of friendship and reapproach with all other nations.
But also, politics has been pointing more towards progressive among politicians - by which I mean not only the national government, but also actions inside prefectures and cities - and among the population. Transgender and LGBT rights are slowly but surely gaining ground, militarization is opposed by the majority of the population, revisionism of history is mostly seen as lunacy by an extremist party.
Japanese culture works in a different way than general western ideals. Collectivism trumps over individualism. Younger people are less likely to be interested in national politics and broad ideals, and more worried about the local happenings and things surrounding them - work, family, local stuff.
I won't judge if this is a good or bad thing, I'm not japanese, I don't know enough of the modern culture and modern problems, so I don't feel the right to say whether they are wrong or right.
But I certainly envy some of the stuff japanese society achieved, that I do.
Do understand though, I'm far from saying Japan is perfect or something like that, and that their country doesn't deserve some criticism on matters like the lack of recognition regarding Nanjing Massacre and Comfort Women among other war crimes. It's just that things aren't as black and white as some might think.
South Korea and China are far from being completely at odds with Japan. There have been a ton of cultural exchange over the past decades between these countries. The majority of immigrants in Japan comes from those two countries. Tourism in between the three countries dominate all other nationalities. Look it up. If you have ever been recently vising Japan, you totally know this.
By comparison, regarding the general population sentiment of countries, I'd have to say for instance, that the US has a far more difficult relationship with Mexico than Japan has with South Korea.
With China it's more problematic, but this is more because of current standings rather than history itself, even it being ugly as it was.
Anyways, I already wrote too much. Passing on some of the stuff I learned over the years.
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Here's how I see Super Size Me, the movie, after all these years...
The idea of the experiment wasn't bad in itself... it was pretty interesting to see what would happen to someone's health if he ate only fast food for a while. A worthwhile pursuit perhaps, just out of curiosity and self learning - again, on a base level idea.
The problem with it is on the messaging, the methodology and the framing... not particularly on the movie itself, but on how people interpreted it.
I mean, there were several problems with the movie itself, but the biggest problem was on perception, reception, how it was portrayed, what people thought of it.
Even worse, what lots of people "got" from it without even watching the damn thing.
I'll just go ahead and say I did watch it, but back when it was released... so forgive me if I'm not remembering things right.
But I think it was in the doc itself several caveats, several counter examples of Spurlock's case, including some guy who had been eating at McDs regularly for a good 10 years or more with zero ill side effects. This was on the movie itself, wasn't it?
What happens in annedoctal sensationalized experiments on extremely complex subjects is that once it goes mainstream, it creates cultural FUD, which in turn ends up creating generations upon generations of Dunning-Kruger effect type "experts", who are ready to give recommendations, write books, build programs and whatnot based on their own personal experiences, annedoctal evidence, or even less than that.
People would be better off thinking that you should eat less and exercise more to get healthier, period. That and that alone.
The rest just added to confusion and arguably created entire industries that feeds on the original FUD to fill their own pockets.
Here's the truth no one wants to hear about nutrition, diets, what we eat and how we processs it: it's extremely complex, like you just cannot fathom how complex it is, and we still know (as in really know, scientifically) very very little about it.
If someone says he or she figured it out and will explain to you in some simple steps, he or she is lying to you pure and simple. Or, again, Dunning-Kruger effect.
See, how we process food is influenced not only by the multiple factors around what we are eating, on subject fast food, but also on all the complexities of our individual organisms. Just about everything you can imagine has an influence on it. From metabolic processes, enzime production, mood, our current status around muscle mass, DNA, day to day habits and whatnot, all the way to this incredible thing everyone has different from one another that we call our gut flora. But not only the gut flora, but the flora of all organs food interacts with.
You take the multitude of variables that our own organisms provide, mix with the multitude of variables that food provides, you get something as complex as deciphering and figuring out as... a weather system or worse.
You just cannot map it all out. Too many things interact with each other, every single interaction having it's own consequences.
So, if you ever hear someone talking a bunch about nutrition in an authorative manner telling what you should or shouldn't eat to have this or that effect, be very wary of it. It's not that the intention is always bad, it's not that people are always trying to fool you or sell you some snake oil, it's just that most people are not aware how little we actually know about it, how little we can assume, how little one's experiences translates to another.
Of course, we do know some very general stuff because over decades science has studied and observed effects. We do know, for instance, that out bodies do not produce everything it needs to work properly, and thus the need to consume food with certain properties and whatnot to stay healthy. Vitamins, calcium, fiber... that kinda thing. And even that often gets distorted to sell crap like supplements to people who don't even know if they really need it.
Ammount of calories recommended per person per day, this gets more into a fuzzy area... as people will know, different countries have different recommendations. Because again, it's not exact science, this varies from individual to individual.
When it gets to type of food, it's even less certain. The more you look into it, the less certain it becomes.
Even setting annedoctal crap aside, health magazines, celebrity crap, the "healthy food" industry in general - there is likely no area of science, hard science, more controversial than that related to nutrition.... people that follows scientific research news will likely have noticed it.
Sodium is bad for you, actually it isn't, eggs have bad cholesterol, actually they don't, coffee is bad for you, actually it's good, alcohol is poison, but you should drink wine in moderation, chocolate makes you fat and sad, actually it enhances your mood, yadda yadda yadda. It goes on and on and on with contradicting study results and recommendations. Guess what? This is squarely because of how complex it is, plus all the conflicting industry interests, how hard it is to prove anything for the general population... most of those studies are observational, they don't get to the core mechanics of it because they are too hard to map out.
Even fast food, let me tell you something - perhaps it's crap in comparison to fancy dining, taste wise I mean, but because of liability concerns, sourcing, and whatnot - you will likely, in several parts of the world, eat healthier in a fast food chain than in a mom and pop corner shop.
The exact same thing that causes dread to some - industrial processing, preservatives, standardization and whatnot at the very least guarantees some level of safety and sterilization that you might not get in a cheap-o joint. On the other hand, when something like salmonela hits the supply chain, everybody gets the bonus uniformily. xD
In any case, what should you take out of it? That the relationship with food is very individual, and wildly varies from person to person. So, you should absolutely experiment what works and what doesn't for yourself. Don't trust people who keeps using authoritative tone to tell you what you should or should not eat, and in general, if you are looking to get healthier or stay healthy, simple and clear is just better - eat less in quantity with more variety, exercise more. That's what you have to worry about the most, and there are no shortcuts to it, at least for now.
Of course, this is an authoritative tone, so you can doubt it too...
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