> Really? Dangerous? Like loaded gun in the hands of an angry monkey dangerous, or just riding a bike while wearing flip flops dangerous? Neither. More like ma

> Really? Dangerous? Like loaded gun in the hands of an angry monkey dangerous, or just riding a bike while wearing flip flops dangerous? Neither. More like making generalisations dangerous (Although I am sure you will be able to pick apart my post to find plenty of generalisations, too). > The average American diet is, to use your inflammatory language, "outright suicidal for an average middle-American". It's high fat, high sugar, low fiber, and low in nutrients (unless "fortified" with artificial concentrations of vitamins and minerals), and it is nothing like previous American generations diet. I did not at any point advocate that Americans eat the average American diet. Nor did I mean any offense to America, merely to the diet. I don't eat such a diet, nor do I eat the average Russian diet since leaving that region. The point I am making is that accepting any extreme view on dietary requirements is a strange thing to do considering how little we understand about the workings of our metabolism, regardless of how many cultures have enjoyed such a diet for countless millennia. [edit: I realise you did not advocate such a position, either. But plenty of people misinterpret statements like the one I quoted to do just that.] I am sure tofu is great, and has lots of science behind it. So does consuming red meat. Or milk. They also have lots of science pointing to the contrary. But most of those scientific arguments apply to extreme cases. In the right environment, eating an occasional steak will not give you a heart attack or colon cancer, just as eating a few soy beans will not make you impotent. But excluding foods on the basis of current scientific understanding strikes me as more damaging, if it turns out that those foods carried nutrients we previously did not understand. Of course, dietary requirements based on religious or moral principles are something else entirely. Seems like we agree on the general principles, the devil is in the implementation details, and one's risk profile.