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Good advice overall (with caveats)
The UCSF Guide to Healthy and Happy Eating provides advice mainly backed by science. The exceptions are:
Section 3: Treat Food as Medicine
- First, I disagree with the underlying philosophy. Food is food, it is not medicine. Certainly, food can make you sick. People with certain diseases or strong predisposition to certain diseases need to avoid selected foods. For example, if you have diabetes, you need to control the amount and timing of sugar you eat But the idea that eating particular foods, such as soy, will make a generally healthy person healthier has very meager scientific support. The studies are mainly correlational, not prospective comparative studies, and hence are not robust. Be very skeptical of "superfoods."
- The reason to eat organic foods is to protect the environment from chemicals and pesticides. There is no evidence that organic foods are any healthier than conventionally raised foods.
- Nevertheless, I applaud the effort to persuade cancer patients to avoid kooky diets do what we all should do, eat a balanced diet with lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Section 6: Restrict When You Eat
- This section is based almost purely on animal data and should be taken with a large grain of salt.