It's food. It's nutrition. Food isn't medicine. All food is healthy if you eat it in reasonable amounts and you make sure to get all the nutrients you need. If you're consuming an overabundance of carbohydrates then you're not eating healthy, but that's not a problem with the food, it's a problem with your behavior and food choices.
This is exactly what Coca-Cola wants us to believe about food.
e.g.
> “Beating obesity will take action by all of us, based on one simple common-sense fact: All calories count, no matter where they come from, including Coca-Cola and everything else with calories,” the female announcer said. “And if you eat and drink more calories than you burn off, you’ll gain weight.”
There's obviously no difference between the foods and everything that compromises us is just due to personal failure.
I'm with Coca-Cola on this one, at least as it relates to their flagship product.
I drink less than one coke a month. I get the sugar kind, because I prefer the mouth feel, but even with corn syrup, there is just no way this has any negative health consequences for me.
This is part of a very general problem, one without obvious solutions: anything which feels good, or is fun, will have people who harm themselves by using it too much.
Mitigating this (it can't be solved) is a boring, slow, social process. Soda vending machines probably shouldn't be in schools. Maybe fast food restaurants should stop bundling a soda for basically-free? But it is basically free, pennies per cup, and I'm wary of anything which forces a huge corporation to not pass that on to the consumer. I've seen no evidence that soda taxes are effective, it strikes me as just a regressive tax.
So we're left with the long slog of convincing people that it's a bad idea to drink a soda with every meal. Which appears to be working... slowly.
When I gain excess weight, it's bread. And not the low-status peasant bread with dough conditioners and added sugar: no I get the fancy sourdough bread, or bagels, and just eat more of it than I really should. There is only one person who can prevent this, and he does my grocery shopping.
What they said is correct. If you eat more than you burn, you gain weight. That's how it works. If you believe different you're unlikely to maintain a healthy weight. Dieting and maintaining a healthy weight is all about energy balance and personal behavior. I've lost weight and kept it off for four years now.
> All food is healthy if you eat it in reasonable amounts
That is true if one is speaking about the basic categories like "fats/carbs/sugars" etc., but the concern is really about certain additives in processed foods. When ingesting a carcinogen, sure it is repeated exposure that raises one’s odds of developing cancer, but all it might really take is just a single time. That is why additives are sometimes banned from country to country: because there might not even be a "reasonable amount" greater than zero.
