Dietary recommendations are constantly changing. Just yesterday, you couldn't eat after six, but today you can. Some scream about the dangers of fatty foods, while others see no danger in them. Perhaps today we only know one thing for sure: your diet should take into account your unique characteristics—your genes, your age, where you live, your work history, any existing illnesses, food availability, and how they can be interchanged and compatible.

Biologist and geneticist Ancha Baranova and nutritionist Maria Kardakova have co-authored a book that helps you look at healthy eating from a different perspective. The book destroys many stereotypes regarding the harmfulness and benefits of various products, shows the risks of the most common diets, provides food for thought and an incentive for a conscious approach to nutrition.

There are no specific recipes here, but the general principles of nutrition are highlighted.

Besides, this is simply a fascinating read about our amazing body.

From the author:

Perhaps the most famous confusion regarding changing dietary recommendations occurred in America. When, as a result of the growing popularity of fast food, the inhabitants of this continent began to visibly 'get fat,' the problem was quickly dubbed the epidemic of the 20th century. In the late 1960s, as a result of an incorrect interpretation of data from a large-scale study, the American Heart Association put the entire nation on a diet, urging them to give up not only fatty meat and butter, but also full-fat dairy products and egg yolks. Low-fat products immediately became a trend. The reduction in fat consumption was colossal, but the rate of increase in the percentage of the population suffering from obesity and cardiovascular disease did not slow down at all.

Furthermore, the universal low-fat program led to a sharp increase in the incidence of type 2 diabetes. And not without reason. When low-fat diets are made, sugar is added to foods, sometimes in unimaginable quantities. Fighting fat, people overloaded themselves with carbohydrates, and their tissues became resistant to the action of insulin, causing disease.

The scientific basis of the 'low-fat' theory was quickly disproved, but the incorrect recommendations were enshrined in laws, where they remained until the late 1980s, and in some places they are still considered relevant out of habit. And the habit of snacking on sugary 'snacks' is not easy to overcome.

Let's be lenient about this face palm of nutritionology. Since the science itself is less than a century old, the widespread failures of its early stages are understandable. Fortunately, things are already improving. Currently, in addition to nutritionists, epidemiologists, microbiologists, physicians, geneticists, and bioinformaticians have joined nutrition research. Each new recommendation is much more scientifically sound than its predecessor, in part due to innovative research approaches and the ability to process larger volumes of data, which means it's much easier to establish cause-and-effect relationships between various factors.