Back in this post, I wrote about folks on the Internet who tell you what is good for you to eat and what is bad. There's been a recent explosion of them, inspired (I suspect) by the fact that a gent named Bobby Parrish, who I wrote about then, and a few others seem to be making very tidy livings with such videos. It feels to me like there are thousands of them now and that at least 95% of them don't know what the hell they're talking about. It also feels to me like I haven't the time or knowledge to winnow out the 5% who might.
Some of them imply or outright claim to be doctors…and who knows? A few of them might actually be real ones. It almost doesn't matter because you have one guy explaining how seed oils will kill you and a lady telling you seed oils are great for you and someone of indeterminate gender telling you that seed oils won't have any effect on you, good or bad, until you've consumed enough to fill an Olympics-size swimming pool. As a person with numerous food allergies, I have never believed in one-size-fits-all advice on what I should or shouldn't eat. That's one of the gripes I have with online medical and food recommendations — that myopic attitude of "This is good for me so of course it'll be good for you!"
I haven't been in a Costco lately but from the looks of some of my Instagram browsing, their stores are all filled with people making little videos telling you what to buy, what to eat, what not to put in your mouth, etc. Most of them seem unaware that there's a pretty good chance that what's sold in their neighborhood Costco might not be sold in everyone's neighborhood Costco…so even their reports on what's available isn't very useful to me. And a lot of them seem to think that they're the only ones smart enough to read the label on something.
I've started skipping these videos and whenever possible, I click whatever I can click to try and be shown less of them…but it's difficult. To give health advice on the Internet, you don't have to know anything about medicine or nutrition or the contents of our food. You just have to know how to upload. I'm fully expecting Trump to appoint one of them to oversee our nation's health…because you just know whoever's next in that job will know even less than Robert F. Kennedy Jr.