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Stardate 20011001.1121 (On Screen): Health food advocates tell us "you are what you eat", though there's seemingly no consensus among them as to exactly what a "healthy diet" might be. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule.

Reduce your salt intake, right? Not necessarily. For instance, people who take Lithium for treatment of mania are advised to make sure that they have plenty of salt in their diet. The problem is that the toxic level of lithium is only about three times the therapeutic dose, and lithium is chemically very similar to sodium. When we limit our sodium intake, our bodies try to conserve sodium, and as a result of this we will retain lithium as well, and it can build up to an overdose, leading to arrhythmias, coma, hypotension, peripheral vascular collapse, and seizures.

How about organic foods? Say, "free range chickens", for example. Better for you? Not in the UK, anyway. It seems that they have a much higher rate of infection with Campylobacter, a common cause of food poisoning. Factory-raised chickens are kept isolated and the entire factory is sterilized once per generation. Free range chickens are exposed to the manure of previous generations of chickens and of other animals, massively raising their chances of becoming infected. (Never eat "rare" chicken! In New England, about one third of poultry products, eggs and meat, are infected with Salmonella, and the rate is lower but significant nearly everywhere. Adequate cooking will kill it and render it safe.)

But a low fat diet -- now that is one we can all agree on, right? Fat is evil, carbos and protein are good. Oddly enough, not even that one is invariably correct. Epilepsy can be a terrible and debilitating condition, and for some unfortunates modern drugs have no effect. Some people have as many as 400 seizures per month. A study now shows that a large number of them can be helped by a diet very high in fats (saturated fats, at that!) while being very low in carbohydrates. The exact mechanism by which it works is not known, though there are hypotheses, but the clinical results are unambiguous -- and the positive effects of a two year diet of this kind may well be permanent.

I'm certainly not saying all of us should go out right now and eat high-fat high-salt diets; of course not. But it's important to keep in mind that a "healthy diet" is what is healthy for you, and that this may not be the same as what is healthy for someone else. (discuss)