That's a vacuous argument. It's true for literally anything.

an excessive consumption of water is bad, drinking the right amount of clean water is solely beneficial

an excessive consumption of eggs is bad, eating the right amount of eggs is solely beneficial

an excessive consumption of toxic sludge is bad, eating the right amount (0) of sludge is solely beneficial

The question, of course, is what is the right amount and is it more or less than what most people eat.

This is such a disingenuous reply.

We are not talking about cyanide here or some strange nutrient that you can overdose if you're not careful. A serving of whole grains every day (just read the back of the box if you're unsure what the quantities are) is solely beneficial for you and unless you have a medical condition you simply can't go wrong.

I was trying to be flippant, which is fun for me but obviously not very helpful, so let me rephrase my answer.

I agree there is a non-zero amount of grains that is healthy to consume, but your answer doesn't say anything about what that amount should be, and as such just states something that is pretty obvious. It would improve your answer a lot if you stated which quantities you are thinking of, and even more if you include sources.

From your original comment I honestly was not able to tell that your recommendation was to eat cereal daily in the amounts recommended by the back of the box.

I gave up on nutrition scientists a couple of decades ago.

I've taken the view that my stomach is my best guide to what I ought to eat. That's convenient, because jamming food down my throat that I don't actually fancy makes me gag.

I end up eating a mix of veg and red (mostly) meat. The veg consists mostly of grains (pasta, rice, wholemeal toast) - I don't much care for rabbit food. I eat red meat daily, but in tiny quantities. I have a very small steak once a week or so. The steak isn't small because I'm scared of red meat; it's small because that's how much I want to eat. Tonight, I will eat Brocolli Mornay (broccoli-cheese).

I eat refined sugar. Not much, but it doesn't frighten me; the sugar in refined sugar is either the same as the sugar molecules that occur in all foods, or suffers the same metabolic destiny (it's either excreted, or turns into glucose). I am liberal with butter when cooking; fat makes food appetising, and it's hard to make tasty food without using fat.

I'm overweight, but the main reason for that is that I drink a lot of booze - not that my diet is no good.

I think nutritionists should focus on teaching people how to listen to their stomachs more, and to nutritionists less.

> true for literally anything

Pedantic: no. It’s true for everything that is safe or beneficial to consume. There is no “right amount” of lead or plutonium in your diet.

Even more pedantic: The right amount is 0. I did include that case in my answer.

Touché!

I wish that we stopped saying things like ‘eating this and that is beneficial’ or ‘good for your health’.

You know, consuming calories is immensely beneficial and good for your body if you haven’t had a meal for a day. Doesn’t really matter if it’s refined grains or whatever.

Consuming some vitamin-rich whatever is healthy for you if you’re low on those vitamins, otherwise it’s calories and a bunch of work for your liver.

There’s stuff that is objectively bad for your health, almost no matter the circumstances. Like some fried sugar-rich dessert, unless you’ve been starving for a few days it’s probably going to be bad for you on all accounts.

Are you saying that eating the right amount of something is good and eating the wrong amount is bad?

You may be right, you may be wrong but with respect, if you can't supply references to peer-reviewed studies to support your contentious assertion then why should anyone believe you?

> you may be wrong

You can't be wrong if you say that eating excessive amounts of X is dangerous, but eating the right amount of X is optimally beneficial. You can be completely vacuous, but not wrong.

There’s science that shows whole grains are not good for you, just as there are studies showing they’re good for you.