Maybe what is considered nutritionally healthy always has an element of trendy to it. Was reading on the history of bread the other day (looking inside this book on Amazon). If we eat bread at all nowdays, we value homemade or artisan (ha!) bread. But machine manufactured bread was originally considered far more hygenic and thus healthy than homemade bread (think fear of infectious disease in an age before antibiotics). And contrary to the current emphasis on whole grains in mid last century enriched white bread was just considered super healthy. It is ENRICHED with all these essential vitamins and builds strong, bones, and muscles and is what you *should* feed your kids so they can grow up strong, don't you know?

Also in the old days people ate a LOT of bread. They averaged from the turn of the 20th century to the 1960s, 6-8 slices of bread a person a day! Wow. I don't know about you, but to modern lower carb sensibilities that seems like a LOT of bread!! And they weren't fat! Of course they were likely more active, and they weren't eating corn syrup or drinking large sodas (although they did eat sugar - sugar consumption was never that low I don't think), and they certainly weren't eating modern high omega 6 fats (those and trans fats are truly modern in being so widespread).

http://www.amazon.com/White-Bread-So...dp/0807044679/

No, I don't think we will ever reach a day when empty big gulp calories, with no evolutionary history at all in the human diet (I mean you can debate to what extent primitive people ate say grains, but you can't debate they were eating coca cola!) will be considered health food. And I like to think nutrition progresses and that we have a better idea about it now etc.. But it's quite possible being fat won't be seen as so bad in retrospect (some people say so now), it is even possible that sugar won't be seen as so bad in retrospect (although evidence points to it as quite bad now). When the whole state of the planet hangs in balance I'll go with the best scientific evidence we have now, and I'll go all in, but what you personally put in your mouth ...

And now back to your regularly scheduled healthcare debate.