Oh no. I have been asked for dietary advice.

I am not qualified. I’ve never taken a nutrition course, I have no degree in the field, you should not take nutrition advice from me. That’s the simple answer.

On the other hand, I’m aware of the problem: there are unholy swarms of people and ‘influencers’ who have less knowledge of basic biology than I do who are flooding the zone with all kinds of cockamamie ideas based primarily on ideology. Sometimes the people who pretend to have the most knowledge about the human body give the very worst advice, so how do you figure out what is good advice? I mean, you’ve got total wackaloons who have driven themselves into induced comas and neurotic breakdowns telling you to eat nothing but beef; you’ve got other nerds insisting that everyone must avoid meat, eggs, and gluten (which is necessary for some people); and then you’ve got breatharians and other insane people who believe in living on diet Coke and Big Macs.

On the third hand, human beings have survived for hundreds of thousands of years without TikTok, eating what was available and tasted good, and cultivating wonderful cuisines without relying on bizarre notions of what some wild-eyed skinny fanatic said. That’s the thing about nutrition: traditions are good guides because they’re the product of people who survived their diet. OK, French sauces and hakarl might be extreme and bad for you in the long run, but human experimentation also gave us curries and bread. We haven’t died of anything like that unless consumed in excess.

My general guide to eating is simple: moderation in everything. Avoid heavily processed foods. Try a variety of things, a ‘balanced’ diet. Beans, rice, and potatoes can be the solid foundation for your diet, and have the additional virtue in these tight economic times of being cheap. Build on them with spices — I feel like one of the cardinal sins of the American diet is the spice deficiency. Spices make mundane, boring, but reliable staples interesting and allow you to get flavor without feeling like you have to indulge in buying exotic, expensive, heavily processed foods.

Add stuff you can find in season. I like to add a piece of fish to a meal for a bit of richness…or use an egg, or some broccoli, or a side of peas. Avoid uniformity.

Learn how to make a paella, or a curry, or a stew. Just the process of assembling all the elements of these kinds of foods guarantees that you’ll get a dietary variety, and it will taste good. I trust tradition far more than I do the latest influencer fad. Your best bet is to ignore people like me and just spend more time in the produce section of your grocery store, gathering up tomatoes and turnips and cabbage and mushrooms and carrots and peppers and onions and cauliflower and green beans and garlic, and then figure out how to cook them and make a delicious meal. Pick up a variety of fruits for dessert.

It takes a bit more effort than picking up a box of premade something-or-other, but it would be better for you.