If you enjoy good health and high health resiliency, then you likely will do well on a wide variety of dietary patterns. The Mediterranean Dietary Pattern, for example, is a good choice for those who are well and have no evidence of having any difficulties with tolerating different foods or evidence of or risk for metabolic problems.
For the many who aren’t in the peak of health, you need to find your own path. You may need to re-do this repeatedly for different stages and circumstances of your life. The Mediterranean Diet may still be a good choice, but that can’t be taken for granted.
There never will be a “best diet”.
In fact, the very discussion that we can use research to find “the best diet” to advise to individuals has a destructive effect and takes us down the wrong path.
If you encounter this concept, please consider calling it out as nonsense, so we can move the conversation on to useful things.
Why do we have nonsense like that in the field of nutrition???
The field of nutrition is chock full of non-science attitudes, practices, beliefs, etc. that you never find in other areas of medicine!
Imagine if anyone (let alone most of the major players in the field) were proposing a “best treatment for breast cancer”.
What if there were recommendations for a specific combination of amount and type of exercise that was supposed to be best for everyone, in detail no less?
We don’t talk about a best treatment of high blood pressure!
In all other fields of medicine, the need for an individualized approach is considered the foundation of good care. Research points the way to which interventions are most promising to try first, but then the individual’s response to that treatment is assessed and the plan is changed if the outcome is not good.
Core Health MD 