Comments towards food

This instance took place when I was working at my corporate office. I was with a colleague of mine. We were peacefully having our lunch together. Another colleague decided to join us for lunch. This colleague considered himself to be a health expert. As soon as he joined us for the lunch he is started commenting on every food item that was with us in our tiffins.
"Do you know wheat is really unhealthy. Rice is not good for health, it increases the weight quickly. Spouts should be consumed raw. Buttermilk does not have any health benefits. Indian food is not healthy. Traditional oils are bad for health. Ghee is not good for health," the list of unhealthy food as per him was never ending. Me and my friend were tired of his constant commenting and criticism of food. Furthermore both of us were healthcare professionals hence we knew better about nutrition than this colleague who was from finance background. But apparently being a "gym bro" gives someone more knowledge than someone who had actually learnt about health and medicine.

Unfortunately this was not just the story with the uninvited colleague. Nowadays this has become a trend that one person gives unsolicited health advice to another person is respective of their qualification. This unsolicited advice generally comes from a YouTube video or the social media content of a health influencer. Whereas most of the health influencers have no clue what they are talking about. Health influencers themselves are not very educated and generally they speak about the content that has been provided to them either by the script writer or the brands who are sponsoring their content. Yet a lot of people blindly follow the advice of health or fitness influencers and based on what they see or hear they feel that they are qualified enough to talk about the complicated topic of health and nutrition.

In my opinion trend of commenting on food choices, health, and nutrition has to stop. I believe that commenting on anybody's food choices is completely this respectful and humiliating. The study related to health, nutrition, and diet has a specialised stream. There is a reason why several people give years to study from this stream and become professionals. It is safe to see that these people earn their degree and they deserve to be called experts. Only these people are qualified enough to advise anybody on which food is healthy and good for nutrition. Not a person from social media who had no qualification to talk about it.

My humble advice is that whether you are qualified to talk about the health and nutrition or not you should keep your mouth shut until someone ask you to advise. If they have not come to you to get an informed advice regarding the health and nutrition you should not give unsolicited advice. You may think that you are helping someone however in reality you are just being purely disrespectful to the other person.

Hence I believe the trend of advising someone about their health choices needs to go.