Five Pieces of Nutrition Advice I Ignore

Here are five common pieces of common nutrition advice I ignore, from avoiding glucose spikes and seed oils to eating excessive amounts of protein, increasing fiber, and relying on “fat burning” foods.

There is no shortage of nutrition advice on the internet, and some of it is genuinely useful. But after participating in the wellness and nutrition space for over 20 years now, I’ve watched good advice get turned into rigid rules, exaggerated claims, and increasingly complex ways to micromanage what we eat.

So here are five pieces of current nutrition advice I ignore, not because the underlying idea is always wrong, but because it’s been taken far beyond what the evidence or common sense supports.

Let’s dive in.

Five Pieces of Nutrition Advice I Ignore

THE ADVICE: Avoid glucose spikes at all costs.

MY TAKE: your blood sugar should rise when you eat.

This claim has been popular since the Glucose Goddess AKA Jessie Inchauspé instilled a fear around blood sugar fluctuations. And if you’ve spent any time on Instagram lately, you’ve probably been taught to fear the glucose spike.

Inchauspé has popularized use of the continuous glucose monitor (CGM) to track blood sugar levels throughout the day. The CGM has gone from being a medical device primarily used to manage diabetes to a popular wellness accessory, and suddenly people are trying to engineer perfectly flat glucose curves after every meal. The premise sounds scientific: glucose spikes cause oxidative stress, inflammation, glycation and accelerated aging, so the goal should be to prevent them.

There’s a problem with that premise: A rise in blood glucose after eating is a normal physiological response.

When you eat carbohydrates, your blood glucose rises. Your pancreas responds by releasing insulin, glucose is taken up by tissues, and blood glucose comes back down. That’s normal physiology, not evidence that you’ve just accelerated your aging process.

And this is where I have a real problem with the Glucose Goddess’s messaging. She has taken a legitimate conversation about glucose regulation and turned it into the idea that healthy people should be trying to minimize every post meal glucose spike. Her claim that each glucose spike accelerates glycation and aging takes evidence about glycation and chronic metabolic disease and extrapolates it far beyond what we can reasonably conclude about a metabolically healthy person having a normal rise in glucose after eating.

That doesn’t mean glucose regulation doesn’t matter. It absolutely does. Persistent hyperglycemia and abnormal glucose variability can and will advance the aging process, but NOT in otherwise metabolically healthy people. There’s a huge difference between having impaired glucose regulation and having a normal glucose response to a meal.

That’s an important distinction. Now, I will share that I think a CGM can be useful in the appropriate context. If your fasting glucose is consistently elevated above 95 Mg/DL, or your post-prandial glucose levels tend to spike beyond 190-230 Mg/DL, a CGM can be useful for helping you identify the culprit.

For example, I’ve seen a perfectly healthy food like sweet potatoes cause spikes beyond what is considered normal after a meal. So if you’re eating a well curated whole foods diet (meaning you’re avoiding ultra processed foods and sugar) and experiencing energy crashes or other signs of glucose disruption throughout the day, a CGM can be useful to help you identify which foods are not serving you, particularly if you’re on a weight loss plan and not seeing the needle move with a healthy diet and exercise.

Read my post on how to manage and track your blood sugar here.

THE ADVICE: seed oils are toxic and should be completely eliminated from your diet.

MY TAKE: You don’t need to make seed oils the centerpiece of your nutrition strategy.

Seed oils have somehow become one of the biggest villains in the wellness world. Canola, soybean, corn, sunflower and safflower oils are routinely described as “inflammatory,” “toxic,” and therefore you should avoid them like the plague.

I largely avoid seed oils in my diet, but I do not panic if I occasionally consume vegetable oil. This is a newer development for me, as I previously have taken great strides in my diet to avoid anything that contained canola or other seed oils.

I also find the term “processed” increasingly meaningless when it’s used as a synonym for unhealthy. Olive oil is produced by processing olives to extract their oil. Yogurt is processed. Cheese is processed. Tofu is processed. Frozen vegetables are processed. Processing is not a nutritional category. What matters is what happened during processing and the nutritional profile of  the resulting food.

Now, there are legitimate questions around fatty acid composition, omega 6 intake, oxidation during high heat cooking, and the foods in which seed oils are commonly found, typically ultra processed foods like chips and packaged snacks. But those questions have been collapsed online into the much broader claim that seed oils themselves are inherently inflammatory or toxic and lead to inflammatory conditions like cardiovascular disease.

The bigger problem is that seed oils are often lumped together with ultra-processed foods, as though the oil itself is what makes those foods unhealthy. If most of someone’s seed oil intake is coming from fast food, packaged snacks, fried foods and ultra-processed foods, then yes, I’d want to look at that diet. But the problem isn’t necessarily the canola or soybean oil itself. It’s the overall food.

I still recommend olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, or butter for your primary cooking fats and consumption. But do not panic because a salad dressing contains canola oil or because you ate something made with soybean oil. That is to say that occasional seed oil consumption will not ruin your health.

I personally cook at home with avocado and olive oils, and I never buy canola or any vegetable oil for cooking at home. Where I used to go to great lengths to avoid anything with vegetable oils, I no longer stress myself out eating from the Whole Foods hot bar (they use canola) or at a restaurant where I know vegetable oils are the primary cooking oil because they’re inexpensive.

I’d rather see you eating an overall nutrient dense diet than obsessing over whether a single ingredient on a food label belongs to the “good” or “bad” oil category.

THE ADVICE: More fiber is better.

MY TAKE: Fiber can do more harm than good in some cases.

Fiber-maxxing is having a moment. Everywhere you look, it’s eat more fiber.

Fiber is important. It supports bowel regularity, feeds your beneficial gut bacteria, and is associated with numerous health benefits and disease prevention. But hold up; this isn’t a universal claim: More fiber is NOT always better for some individuals.

I see this advice cause problems particularly for people with IBS, significant bloating, dysbiosis, SIBO, or impaired GI motility. These folks struggle with gas, distension, constipation, and abdominal discomfort. They’re told to increase fiber for bowel regularity. But adding beans, certain grains, vegetables, psyllium, and fiber supplements can make them feel terrible and cause their symptoms to flare.

With SIBO, dysbiosis, and IBS, certain fibers (like FODMAP carbs) can trigger fermentation in the small intestine, creating painful gas and pressure and altering bowel motility. These people actually need to consume a lower fiber diet while their gut heals and the underlying dysfunction is addressed.

Lower FODMAP diets work well for a period of time (this diet is NOT meant for long term). I recommend eating an amount and variety of fibers that support your health without flaring your symptoms rather than chasing a number simply because more fiber is better. Health and diet are not one size fits all, and I’ve built my practice on this premise. People are understandably confused when they follow nutrition guidelines and don’t see health outcomes to support the claims.

So if you’re eating a high fiber diet and you’re still constipated, bloated, or uncomfortable, the answer isn’t automatically more fiber. We need to figure out what is driving the dysfunction.

THE ADVICE: You need 150 grams of protein a day.