We are surrounded by more superstimuli than most of us realize.

Examples of superstimuli:

• food: Cheetos / skittles / McDonalds

• goal achievement: video games

• visual arousal: porn

• pair bonding: romance novels

• affection: dogs

• cuteness: puppies & kittens

• stories: TV

• beauty: photoshopped models

• gossip: celebrity magazines

• social approval: Facebook

There is nothing wrong with superstimuli in moderation, but they tend to be addictive, and they can make it harder to enjoy the natural (non-super) versions of those things, which can harm our quality of life. Often times the superstimuli give just *part* of the experience we really crave (like eating junk food that is really tasty and calorie-dense, without really providing satiety or nutritional value).

So be wary if you spend more time on social media than talking to loved ones (or if you own more than 20 dogs).

This piece was first written on July 1, 2020, and first appeared on this site on July 22, 2022.

When we’re choosing what to eat, healthy food may not be the tasty, cheap, or convenient option. How can we prevent this tension between healthiness and the other factors we care about?

Another reason healthy eating is hard is that we are normally forced to choose whether to make the healthy choice (or not) over and over again each day. So, even if we resist eating junk five times, we may succumb the 6th time (and eat too much chocolate cake). How we can avoid choice fatigue and being worn down by temptation?

There is a simple trick that sometimes works like magic to solve the problems above:

A. Eat exactly the same breakfast, lunch, and between-meal snacks five days per week.

B. Choose those pre-selected meals and snacks very carefully. They must be (1) healthy, (2) tasty (to you), (3) convenient, (4) within your budget, (5) nutritiously diverse.

Why these five criteria?

(1) If the food is not healthy, it defeats the whole purpose. So be sure to pick your meals and snacks to be things you’re really confident are healthy (which can be trickier than it seems, given how much contradictory information is out there regarding nutrition).

(2) On the other hand, if the foods you choose are not tasty, you’ll be more likely to eventually quit or grow annoyed with the plan.

(3) If the foods are not convenient to make/get/prepare/order/buy, then when something unexpected comes up, you’re stressed or you’re busy, you may well deviate from the plan.

(4) If the food is not within your budget, you’ll be creating an unsustainable drain on your bank account.

(5) And if the meals are not nutritionally diverse, you’ll be exposing yourself to the possibility of nutritional deficiency and increasing the chance that you get tired of what you’re eating. Note that individuals seem to vary considerably in how quickly they get sick of foods.

I find that I get tired of homogenous foods (e.g., baked potatoes) rapidly, but diverse foods (e.g., a standardized salad with the same exact mix of highly diverse ingredients) I can eat for months without getting tired of them.

It’s really hard on a random day to find foods that meet all 5 of the criteria mentioned above, but this simple plan only requires you to do it ONCE and then to apply that template daily.

I find that, since the plan is totally standardized, it’s a lot easier not to experience temptation. It can become pretty automatic, which is what you want. But still, you should avoid keeping tempting foods nearby because they can make it a lot harder to stick to your plan. The key is to minimize having to make tradeoffs or resist tempting foods.

By regimenting your food in this way, it also can be easier to lose weight, (if that’s your goal, because you can vary the calories in your daily plan). It can also make it much easier to make other dietary alterations, such as reducing sugar or becoming vegetarian or vegan.

There are four reasons I recommend having the regimenting stop before dinner and not apply on the weekends:

• If your selected foods are not diverse enough, you may be missing out on something your body could benefit from, and allowing flexibility at dinner and on weekends will increase your food diversity. Food cravings may also help guide you to things your body needs (e.g., if you don’t have enough salt, you may crave it or find it extra delicious) though it’s disputed whether that sort of honed food craving is a real thing (clearly many cravings we have are not because our bodies need that thing; unless our bodies really need ice cream).

• Dinner time and weekends tend to be the most social eating times, so the plan won’t interfere as much socially.

• Food is one of the joys of life, so dinners and weekends will still give you time to explore the variety.

• By allowing variety with dinner and on the weekends, the whole plan will be less annoying, making it easier to stick with.

Of course, you’ll have to practice reasonable moderation at dinner and on weekends to make sure that you really are eating healthier overall. If you have trouble doing that, you may want to standardize even more meals.

Of course, this plan is not ideal for everyone. Some people would surely get sick of a daily regimen, even if it is diverse. Others might find it hard to stick to such a plan due to temptations or might conclude that the novelty of different foods is too important to them; even if the plan only involves breakfast, lunch, and snacks five days a week.

My prediction, however, is that many people would find this approach to be one of the simplest and most effortless ways to eat better.

If a food regimen like this is what you already gravitate to, or if you’ve been on such a plan for a while, then the next question to ask yourself is: can I make my plan even healthier without significantly losing out on cost, convenient or taste? Your future, healthier self will reap the rewards.

Note: If you’re a creator of wacky-concept restaurants, feel free to steal these ideas, just please invite me to the opening!

No Spoons (a.k.a. Soup Flight)
The entire menu always consists of 30 soups (most hot, some cold, most savory, a few sweet, most classic, a few experimental). They are only served in 1.5 ounce shot glasses, which you sip the soup from; no bowls or spoons. Anyone who brings their own spoon is permanently banned from ever coming again for the rest of their lives (after having their photo taken and put up on a special section of the wall). All soups are served with crispy whole wheat garlic crostini, which you’re encouraged to dip.

Classy Party (a.k.a. Rich Uncle)
No menu, fixed price, all you can eat (but you can only stay for 90 minutes, at which point a timer chimes on your table, and the waiters kick you out). The waiters are dressed to the nines in absurdly fancy outfits and walk around with silver trays of delicious-looking small hors d’oeuvres, the best that you’d find at a classy party, as well as trays of fancy drinks. You wave a waiter over whenever you want what they’ve got (as you do with dim sum). Certain special surprising Hors d’oeuvres (for instance, lavender pentagon mini doughnuts sprinkled in gold leaf) are brought out only rarely by the waiters (and only then in small quantities, on special golden trays), so people in the know keep their eyes peeled for these, and feel superior to the rest of the diners whenever they manage to nab something from a gold tray.

Data-Driven Dining (a.k.a. Randomized Controlled Table)
Yet another small bites restaurant. You don’t order from waiters; instead, you order from a tablet embedded in the center of each table, which digitally guides you through the ordering process. Here’s the twist, though: whatever you order comes in a pair. The two items are somewhat different versions of the same general thing. For instance, if you order the potato croquettes, you get two somewhat differently prepared potato croquettes. Once you’ve eaten them both, you tap on the iPad to indicate which of the two you like better, and the server brings you a third (matching the one you preferred). All the click data is recorded for analysis. In this way, each diner is part of a never-ending series of studies. Each day the chef analyzes yesterday’s data and uses it to inform his or her recipes for that day, discarding all the recipes that lost their match-up and preparing novel variations on those that won. The food endlessly iterates and improves.

Alien Sunset (a.k.a. Ylla)
The restaurant is based on an elaborate fictional alien world that has been thought through in tremendous detail (e.g., maybe based loosely on one of the short stories in “The Martian Chronicles”). The restaurant takes itself absurdly seriously, as one of the top restaurants on a faraway planet (that had a different form of intelligent life, with a very different culture). Each waiter is trained in the history and customs of this alien’s world and made to look alien. The waiters lead you through certain alien rituals at the table. The cutlery does not look familiar to humans. Each menu item references that alien world and a glossary and appendix in the back of the menu fleshes out the backstory and context. Alien items adorn the walls and fill display cases, for instance, the (fake) heads of surreal creatures. You can inspect these items at your leisure. You’re never really quite sure what the food is that you order, but it’s delicious. The toilets in the bathroom are unrecognizable and hard to figure out how to use. The odd lighting and bizarre architecture make it truly not feel like earth. Staff is told to never, ever, to break the fourth wall or reference anything on earth. Upon entering the restaurant, you have to choose something to wear (from a set of options) to make you too look and feel alien. The restaurant has large windows on all four sides and, out of each of them, you can see beautiful alien landscapes (it’s always sunset).

The King Is Mad (a.k.a. Follow the Rabbit)
At first, it seems like any other modestly elegant (but clearly traditional to the point of being stodgy) old restaurant. But then, when you inspect the menu, you realize that each menu item references ambiguous non-food “things” that the food is paired with. For instance, “Mushroom soufflé served with mysterious box” or “Napoleon Pastry, with Imperial Regalia” or “High tea platter with scones, tea sandwiches, and orange rhymes” or “Steaming spaghetti served on your lap” or “Tomato soup served with your choice of an impossibly large or impossibly small spoon” or “Flourless chocolate cake served to everyone but you.” or “Brussel sprouts in the dark.” Each item that you order involves some experience occurring, or something changing in the restaurant, or some object being presented to you, or something unexpected occurring during the delivery of the food.

Saucy (a.k.a. Fifths)
All the food is served in five thin slices (kept apart with thin separators), with each slice having a different sauce (which you pick from an insanely large number of sauce options). For instance, you could get the tofu steak (simultaneously) with sweet and sour sauce, Sriracha, Szechuan sauce, black pepper sauce, and mushroom miso sauce.

Mindful Eating (a.k.a. Presence)
Prix fixe menu only. Your meal is served in a special wooden mechanical box containing 25 small sealed compartments. The compartments are on a timer system, with one new compartment opening exactly every 3 minutes (so the entire meal takes 75 minutes). Each compartment contains just a few bites of food and comes with a one-sentence message attached (that you can only read once it opens) telling you what to focus on, do or notice while taking those bites. For instance, one message might tell you to notice the subtle hints of wasabi, another might suggest that you eat the next bite recalling a fond childhood memory, another might ask you to deeply inhale the scent before eating, and yet another might instruct you to pay close attention to the way the next bite will crunch in your mouth with the texture (but not taste) of potato chips. Each item has strong similarities with the last item but an obvious difference as well (e.g., one small scoop of sweet potato salad followed by one juicy sweet potato dumpling followed by one juicy mushroom dumpling followed by a tiny mushroom soup), so that through a progression of similar items you end up eating a wide variety of different things.

The Fruit Organ (a.k.a. Sweet Melody)
A small storefront, mainly occupied by a giant musical device that looks like an organ. But the device is hooked up to a dozen or so ever-rotating spheres of fruit juice/pulp (freshly blended that morning). Different chords on the organ are set to release different juices (down through tubes). You order the fruit smoothie you want by placing your plastic cup beneath where the tubing comes together and then asking for a specific song (that is known to produce that combination of fruits that you want), which the organist then plays for you (automatically preparing your drink as well as calculating the total that you owe). You can also go “off-menu” and order any famous song you like, which will create a unique random blend, replicable in the future if you like.

Talk (a.k.a. Strangers Dining)
You’re encouraged to go alone (though bringing one friend is allowed). You’re seated at a circular table for five people (i.e., with four strangers), which is small enough so that the whole table can easily talk together, and you have a meal together. All the tables at the restaurant seat 5, and you’re seated as soon as four other strangers arrive (or, with however many other strangers have arrived after 15 minutes as long as it’s at least one other person). The food is all served family-style (i.e., dishes are all to share). Each dish comes with a thought-provoking, deep, or provocative question written on the platter, which each person is encouraged to answer. A shortlist of rules at each table bans questions like “where are you from” and “where do you work” and comments on the weather. Instead, it suggests replacements like “where have you always wanted to live for a month?” and “what are you passionate about?” and comments regarding what you noticed about the other person.

Everything Fusion (a.k.a. Eat Everywhere)
The names of every country in the world (or, to be more practical, the 30 countries whose cuisines are most popular) are written on wooden balls or ping pong balls, one ball per country. The balls are placed into one of those “lottery draw” devices that makes it easy to draw them at random. Each month, the device is used to draw two random balls (that is, two random countries), ideally on a special night that is pre-announced so that people who happen to be dining at the restaurant that night (or who want to come for it) can witness the drawing. Then the head chef invents a dish that is a fusion of those two country’s cuisines (or, the recipe is crowdsourced from a submission section of the website, with the winning recipe chosen by the head chef and the winning submitter getting a free meal for two people). That new fusion dish is added to the menu, and another prior fusion (selected by the head chef) is removed from the menu. Even if “only” 30 countries are used, that’s still 435 possible fusions!

No Tables (a.k.a. The Angry Diner)
The menu has two hundred items on it, crammed way too close together, with unnecessary color splotches all over the place, in addition to pictures of random people (you have no idea who they are). It is open at odd hours and not open some days for no apparent reason. It only has a few tables. You can’t take a picture of the menu, ask if an item is vegetarian, bring more children than adults, order too little, order too much, come in a group of more than four people, ask for recommendations, or take too long to order, or the staff will promptly and ruthlessly throw you out. The menu items are confusing as hell (e.g., Macaroni and cheese pancakes with hot sauce? Slutty cakes? Zorros: cinnamon waffle potato? “Love buns” in 6 possible flavors, including cauliflower mango flavor). You are too afraid to ask questions about any of the items, though. The waiter sometimes refuses to give you what you ordered on the grounds that he has “never heard of it before” or because he thinks “it sounds gross.” Sometimes he’ll just stare at you as though you haven’t actually made your order until you panic and change it. [Note: this restaurant already exists in Manhattan; comment if you live in NYC and want its real name.]

Given the incredibly high levels of disagreement in these areas, and the poor quality of studies, it often seems like we know almost nothing.

Below is my attempt (via a combination of brainstorming and crowdsourcing) to list what there does seem to be a high rate of consensus on. Please let me know if you notice any mistakes.

Tentative List of Universally Recommended Health Interventions

(1) Don’t consume a lot of sugar (at best, it’s “empty calories” and could lead to tooth decay. But some claim it is much worse than that).

(2) Exercise regularly – it’s best to rotate which type of exercise you do, being very careful to avoid injury, especially when you are getting into new forms of exercise. (It is less clear what forms of exercise are best for long term health, e.g., strength training vs. cardio, and it’s less clear quite how much exercise you should get – also, extremely high levels of exercise are believed to be associated with increasing some health risks, for instance doing Iron Man triathlons).

(3) If you are going to eat a lot of carbohydrates, generally you should choose complex carbs over simple carbs (usually whole grains are also recommended over refined grains, but some argue that whole grains should be sprouted/soaked to remove parts of the seed that are designed to protect it from digestion.)

(4) Brush your teeth with a fluoride toothpaste at least once per day (though perhaps it is not actually a good idea immediately after eating, especially if you’ve been eating acidic foods). The suggestion is to brush before breakfast or wait an hour after eating, and beware of brushing too often or too vigorously. Brushing twice per day may be better than brushing once. Also, note that a VERY small percentage of healthcare professionals are anti-fluoride.

(5) Hydrate regularly throughout each day, as soon as you feel thirsty, but before you are likely to feel thirsty as well (since thirst indicates that you may already be dehydrated, so you want to pre-empt feeling thirsty). Hydrating with water is the safest bet, though it’s not clear how much liquid you need in total (the 8 cups of water a day theory seems to be bullshit). It also is unclear whether it’s important to do this with water, or if other drinks, like unsweetened tea, are acceptable replacements. Hydration may also be good for your teeth by reducing dry mouth – some argue that even mild dehydration can negatively impact mood and performance.

(6) Eat plenty of vegetables (preferably not deep-fried ones – note also that there do exist a very small number of people in the health field who advocate an essentially zero-carb or meat only diet).

(7) Don’t eat a lot of deep-fried foods in general.

(8) Take Vitamin D3 supplements if you are >60 years old and don’t get a lot of outdoor time, or if you are in the general population, take them if you get very little sunlight.

(9) Avoid frequently drinking large quantities of alcohol.

(10) Avoid frequently consuming tobacco products (but since many of them are addictive, that means it’s safest to avoid them altogether).

(11) If you have the ability to make yourself lose weight and keep it off, you should try to lose weight/reduce body fat if you have a very high body fat percentage, or if you have a lot of body fat around the gut area (the extent to which mild to moderate obesity is bad per se is somewhat debated, as in some studies mild levels of obesity were sometimes even correlated with better health outcomes) – avoiding metabolic syndrome and poor blood sugar dysregulation may be more necessary than avoiding a very high body fat percentage though the two are significantly correlated – note also that lots of data suggests that three years after a diet most people have regained the weight they lost, and some say that regularly cycling your weight by losing then gaining then losing again could be unhealthy (so the value of a blanket “lose weight when obese” recommendation is questionable).

(12) If you are going to eat something sweet, a piece of fruit is a better bet than candy or sugary baked goods.

(13) Avoid consuming trans fats.

(14) Don’t consume excessive amounts of mercury (which is found in many fish – some say that tuna, king mackerel, marlin, orange roughy, shark, and swordfish are particularly worrisome).

(15) Don’t eat a lot of foods that are burned to the point of being severely blackened (at best burning tastes bad and destroys the nutrients in food, at worst, it might increase the chance of getting cancer, it’s unclear).

(16) Spend some time outdoors in the sun each week.

(17) Avoid getting frequently sunburned (especially avoid severe sunburn, e.g., blistering).

(18) If you are unusually low in any vitamin then you should consume more of it (but if you have relatively normal levels, there is not a consensus on whether you should have more of any vitamin, except perhaps Vitamin D for the elderly which seems to be basically agreed upon – there is also disagreement about whether vitamin pills are as effective as vitamins from whole foods, or in which cases you should take sublingual dissolving vitamins or vitamin shots instead of pills).

(19) If you are a strict vegan, take vitamin B12 supplements (while only a very small amount of B12 is needed by humans, it is not reliably found in plant-based foods).

(20) Don’t get addicted to any drugs (prescription or non-prescription) other than perhaps caffeine.

(21) Don’t run an increasingly large sleep deficit (though the amount of sleep each person requires to avoid a deficit seems to vary considerably).

(22) Wash your hands with soap regularly (though some claim that special anti-bacterial hand soap is not a good idea)

(23) Don’t regularly have non-negligible amounts of caffeine within a few hours of going to bed (though people’s sensitivity to this seems to vary a lot – some people may be able to get away with it, but on average it impairs sleep quality).

(24) Avoid long stretches of inactivity (i.e., take breaks where you move around).

(25) When typing, avoid having your wrists bent at a significant angle for long periods, avoid having to bend your neck substantially downward or upward to see your computer screen, and avoid sitting with your back hunched forward for long periods (some people find that using a vertical mouse helps if you have wrist pain, and some people report benefits from using a laptop stand to raise your laptop to a more reasonable height).

(26) Each week spend at least a bit of social time with people you get along well with.

(27) If you have very high levels of anxiety, depression, or hopelessness, you should seek treatment as soon as possible (e.g., you could try Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with a psychologist, go to a psychiatrist to try antidepressants, or take up a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction practice).

(28) Eating a diverse range of healthy foods is usually better than eating a narrow range of foods (of course, a diverse range of unhealthy foods is still unhealthy).

(29) Avoid very high doses of certain vitamin and mineral supplements where overdoses are known to happen (e.g., Iron supplements, vitamin A and vitamin B-6 – beware of mega-dose vitamins in general unless you know what you’re doing, as they are unlikely to be helpful and could be harmful).

(30) If you have a broken bone or reasonable sized cut or scrape that appears as if it could be infected, go to a doctor immediately (some broken bones require splinting to heal properly, infected wounds may become dangerous without proper treatment).

(31) If you have a mole that violates the ABCDE rule, get it checked out by a dermatologist immediately. That means you should get it checked out if it has: Asymmetry (if one side of the mole doesn’t match the other), Border irregularity, color that is not uniform, Diameter more than 6 mm (which is about the size of a pencil eraser), and Evolving size, shape or color.

(32) Highly processed meats (e.g., hot dog or bologna) are worse for you than less processed ones.

(33) Do things to keep your brain active, such as learning something new each week or doing something that is mentally taxing.

(34) If you have high levels of stress, try to reduce them using whatever techniques you find effective (high stress has been linked to various negative indicators in the body – techniques that some people find effective to reduce stress include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, yoga, walking in nature, cuddling with a pet, or exercise that keeps your heart rate elevated for a reasonably long period).

(35) Keep your sleep cycles at least roughly in sync with the dark/light cycle of the planet (i.e., do most of your sleeping at night, and live most of your waking hours during the day).

(36) Don’t regularly drink alcohol before going to bed (as it is known to cause poor sleep).

(37) If you think you may be suicidal, or you have made plans for how you might commit suicide, you should call a suicide hotline immediately, and afterward make an appointment with a therapist or psychiatrist to see them as soon as possible (and tell this person about your suicidal thoughts).

(38) Keep your living environment at a comfortable temperature, generally in the 65-75°F (18-24°C) range.

(39) If you’ve had pain in your mouth or teeth for more than three weeks, go to a dentist!

(40) Wear your seatbelt every time you are in a car. (Even if it’s a short ride, do it anyway, because, if you don’t, you are eroding the seatbelt wearing habit – also, a note for New Yorkers that even car accidents in taxis can hurt you badly when your face hits the glass in front of you.)

(41) Folic acid supplements for women who are or may be pregnant (to help avoid birth defects).

(42) Either keep health insurance, or live in a country where health care is universal, or keep enough savings that in a medical emergency, you can get the treatment you need.

(43) Don’t drive when drunk or high on drugs, or be in a car driven by such a person.

(44) Don’t send text messages or do other distracting things while you’re driving, or be in a car driven by someone who is distracted.

(45) If you are depressed, bi-polar, or potentially suicidal, don’t live in a house that contains a gun (or other easy means of suicide).

(46) Always use condoms when having sex with new partners if they have not been recently screened for STIs.

(47) Always use some form of birth control when having heterosexual intercourse unless you are planning a pregnancy.

(48) Women should avoid wearing tampons for more than 8 hours at a time to reduce the risk of Toxic Shock Syndrome. (Some say that the lower the absorbency of the tampon the lower the risk)

(49) If you have a severe bacterial infection, take antibiotics. (Note that the type of bacteria and antibiotic matters.)

(50) If you have diarrhea, continually drink oral rehydration solution (however if you have severe dehydration or are vomiting, seek medical treatment – you can make your own oral rehydration solution using 6 ‘level’ teaspoons/25.2 grams of sugar and 0.5 teaspoon/2.1 grams of salt in 1 liter of water – or you can drink Pedialyte – diarrhea is actually surprisingly dangerous, so stay hydrated!)

(51) If you are taking antibiotics, and you are not immunocompromised, then take a probiotic with the antibiotic to reduce the chance of antibiotic-induced diarrhea. (Note that there is a lack of consensus on the amount and type of probiotic to take).

(52) Eat foods containing fiber. (Sometimes about 30g per every 2000 dietary calories is recommended, but recommendations vary)

(53) Don’t live or work in a place where people regularly smoke indoors.

(54) If you are a women who is planning on having children, try to have them before you reach age 40 (the younger you do it, the safer it is for you and the baby, though with advances in early screening many problems associated with pregnancy at an older age are now caught – fertility also increasingly becomes a problem with age).

(55) Avoid exposure to asbestos and lead paint.

(56) If you live in an area with disease-carrying mosquitos, use a mosquito net on your bed when you sleep.

(57) If you have sudden and severe symptoms of illness that do not resemble a cold or flu, or unexplained symptoms of illness that continue for a long time, go to a doctor.

What else should be on this list that I missed? What am I mistaken about that I should remove from this list (because there is actually some disagreement among experts)?

Also, here are some other health and nutrition questions that didn’t make this list because, while many advocate strongly for one side, there still seems to be a reasonable amount of disagreement (rightly or wrongly):

Important Health Questions Experts Don’t Seem To Have Consensus On

(a) How bad is saturated fat, if at all?

(b) How useful is omega 3 supplementation, if at all?

(c) How bad are carbs versus other macronutrients?

(d) Is there any benefit (or harm) to getting more than the RDA of protein (0.36 grams per pound of body weight)?

(e) Is flossing truly effective? (If you like flossing, or at least don’t mind it, it may well be worth it, but the benefits are not as clearly established as one would ideally like, and there have been some claims, possibly false, that it can cause bacteria to escape from your mouth into your body in a way that could be bad)

(f) Does dietary cholesterol lead to high blood cholesterol? (apparently, the FDA just released new guidelines on this that say “no.”)

(g) Is blood cholesterol correlated enough with bad outcomes that we should care about it, per se?

(h) What types of preventative screening/testing should everyone routinely get?

(i) What dietary supplements (if any) should a healthy person take?

(j) Is there any harm from Aspartame or other artificial sweeteners like Splenda? (all of the many randomized controlled trials on Aspartame on humans I’ve looked out found no negative effects except headaches in a small subset of people, but other studies in rats show weird effects that are hard to interpret, and a lot of people are anti-Aspartame without providing clear reasons – note that sugar alcohols like Sorbitol cause temporary digestive problems for some people.)

(k) Is polyunsaturated fat good for you, bad, or neutral?

(l) How bad is meat for you as a broad category, or is it too broad a category to generalize?

(m) How much should you limit your salt intake, and do moderate levels of salt intake actually increase blood pressure (outside of the rare group of “salt-sensitive” people)?

(n) Which type of cooking oil (e.g., olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, etc.) should you use or avoid?

(o) How much exercise is ideal, and of what forms? [as Stuart Buck points out: “If the goal is to be strong and build muscle mass, lift weights. If the goal is to be fast, agile, etc., work out more like a sprinter and/or a professional basketball player. If the goal is aerobic fitness and endurance, do lots of long runs or swims, etc. But for long-term goals like longevity, that’s where we don’t have rigorous evidence (too much selection bias)”]

(p) Is going into ketosis (by lowering your carb intake dramatically) a good or bad idea? (Many doctors think it is not a healthy state to stay in for a long time, but anecdotally some people who do this diet swear by it)

(q) Is intermittent fasting a good idea?

(r) Is it important to go to bed/wake up at the same time every day?

(s) Is there any real benefit to eating organic foods?

(t) Are “grass-fed” animal products healthier than non-grass fed ones?

(u) Is there any real difference (in your body) between sugar and high fructose corn syrup? (common sense about chemical composition and some studies suggest the answer is that there is no difference, but many people think high fructose corn syrup is worse)

(v) What’s the optimal mix of macronutrients?

(w) Do metformin, rapamycin, resveratrol, human growth hormone, blood transfusions from young people, basis (nicotinamide riboside and pterostilbene), or other NAD boosters increase lifespan for healthy individuals?

(x) Are GMO foods actually risky, or are they fine?

(y ) Is the heuristic of eating “natural” or “whole” foods actually accurate, or does it exclude too much?

(z) Are probiotics (like acidophilus) useful to take for a generally healthy person?

(aa) How important is stretching, what type of stretching (static vs. active) is best, and when should you do it (just before you exercise, just after, or at other times)?

(ab) How bad are pesticides on our foods (which types are bad, and how much of them do we have to consume before problems begin)?

(ac) Should you take a multivitamin pill? (the tide has been turning against them as repeated studies fail to find a benefit in healthy people, but some experts still recommend them – also for water-soluble vitamins, we seem to pee most of it out when we take large doses)

(ad) Are there vitamin/mineral deficiencies that a significant proportion of people in developed countries have? (e.g., possibly magnesium, potassium, choline, D3, K2)

(ae) Is it helpful to wake up when the sun rises each morning?

(af) Do heavily calorie-restricted diets improve longevity in humans (like they do in mice)?

(ag) Is using mouth wash (like Listerine) good for your oral health?

(ah) Is donating blood (for men and women who don’t menstruate) good for health?

(ai) Does zinc or echinacea reduce the severity or duration of colds when taken daily or when taken at the onset of symptoms?

(aj) Does the source of calories (e.g., from carbs, fat, or protein, with fiber or without) matter significantly when it comes to non-water body weight change (or does a calorie have the same effect regardless of the source when we are talking just about weight change and excluding water weight)?