Your Dietary Dogmas are Just Made-Up Religions

Keto, carnivore, pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan, low-carb, high-fat, Paleo, low-sugar, Whole30, intermittent fasting...

These are some of the most popular diets and eating modalities you'll hear about in 2019.  People have arguments about which is better for your health.  Some will even attach a moral, quasi-religious aspect to the type of diet that you pick.  And yes, I've even fallen for a couple of these in the past as well.

But really, if you step back and think about it, these invented diets are just another sign that our lives in industrial societies in 2019 have become so easy and abundant.  For most of human history, "diets" as we know them didn't really exist.  Sure there were some religious dietary restrictions, but those had practical origins.  Some restrictions were established to prevent parasitic diseases caused by eating under-cooked meat and shellfish or poisonous plants.  Others were put in place because it was more practical to keep an animal alive for its milk and its ability to do work instead of eating its meat.  Of course food allergies also came into play.  Generally speaking though, humans ate what they could because they wanted to prevent death by starvation.

The only reason why we have these "modern diets" is because we now have access to whatever we want to eat without having to go in the wilderness, hunt an animal down or gather plants that won't poison you, all while avoiding predators that could potentially eat and kill us.  We don't even have to leave the comfort of our sofas to get a high-calorie meal.  It's gotten so easy in fact that obesity and diseases caused by overeating and being sedentary have become the main cause of death in our society.

While there are scientific research showing how certain types of food affect your body, the nature of the scientific method requires that you change the way you eat according to new, correct information. Being dogmatic about what you eat, but more importantly, proselytizing the superiority of your diet is not helpful.

So the next time that you start judging people for what they do and don't eat, stop and realize that you're just being a vain, privileged a-hole.  The dietary dogma that you follow is nothing more than an invention caused by an overly easy life compared to those of your grandparents and an extremely sedentary society.  Eventually, future scientific research will prove your food cult to be wrong.