By Anthony Campo
With all of the great research and information out there, why is it that the majority of “experts” adopt the simplistic good vs. bad rating system in regards to fitness and nutrition. It is hard to have an intelligent conversation about the latest science and research when most individuals you speak to just attach a “good” or “bad” label to everything. When your grandmother would use a pound of lard to cook up food for your parents that was “bad” (imagine “bad” in your best Frankenstein monster voice) for you because all that fat and cholesterol right? When your uncle tells you how he used to “be a bodybuilder when he was younger”, but now has destroyed knees because “all those squats were bad for his knees.” And recently you might have heard how Crossfit is very dangerous and is “bad” for you. The fact is that none of these statements that most of us have heard over and over again are true. You can’t even turn on the television without hearing some bit about how someone is going to drop dead of a heart attack from eating something with bacon. How did these mis-truths get so engrained into our culture that your average Joe Shmo has no problem telling you how “good” or “bad” something is for you without the slightest bit of factual information to back it up. I will let everyone in on a little secret, 99.8% of things are neither “Good” nor “Bad.” The truth almost always lies somewhere in the gray area. What I have discovered is that in the field of fitness and nutrition is that the more you learn and practice the more you realize that 99.8% of things will fall somewhere in that gray area. So if you are doing the math that means that 0.1% of things are good, 0.1% of things are bad and 99.8% of things can be either good or bad for you depending on several factors.