I'm happy to settle for Michael Pollan's advice:
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
Although I admit I don't follow that as closely as a maybe should. Sure, it would be nice to have some better science in this area. But I think eating a wide variety of food in moderation is enough to keep us generally healthy (the flaw being that Americans are absolutely terrible at doing anything in moderation).
Again, I have to ask, what does moderation mean? In my experience, I have found that almost everyone believes they eat in moderation. The sole exception would be with respect to calories/weight gain. I can only conclude that it is meaningless except in the context where it means eat the amount of calories that you burn.
This is an incredibly tough question, both because it varies widely from person to person and because it's very hard to quantify in numbers.
We are in love with numbers, and we think that we can just count the calories that go into our bodies and that is the secret to becoming skinnier (replace "calories" with "carbs" or any other measurement for the latest diet trend). The BMI is another (albeit much saner) manifestation of this desire to have magic numbers.
We're also enamoured with single-focus solutions: eat less tortillas and get fit, eat a stalk of celery every two hours, chug a glass of water before a meal, whatever the magazine rack at the grocery store tells us.
I am of the opinion that this is all badly misguided, especially because it needn't be that complicated. Eat on a regular schedule, in portions that leave you full but not satiated. Try to buy more raw food products and less highly-processed stuff. Include different types of food in each meal. Exercise regularly (there really is no substitute for this). Set your goals with yardsticks like cardiovascular endurance (for the layman, "can I jog up a flight of stairs without gasping?") instead of trying to lose x number of pounds in a week.
So no, I can't give you an exact answer. It will probably be centuries before nutritional science can do so, if ever. But I firmly believe that we can make ourselves a lot healthier by taking some simple steps to compensate for the fact that our modern lives do not follow the patterns that our bodies evolved to cope with.
I haven't read Pollan's books, so maybe someone can clear this up for me- How is that we are supposed to marvel at Joel the grass farmer that raises animals, but then eat mostly plants? Does he provide any evidence that eating (grass-raised) animal (products) are bad for you?
You got me - I haven't read his books thoroughly either, just a few chapters.
I don't have references on hand, but I believe there's a fair amount of accepted research that shows that we eat far more meat (and probably dairy) than is good for us - some meat gives protein and other good things, but you go too far and your body starts processing all the fats and whatnot in unhealthy ways. The evolutionary standpoint certainly supports this - we evolved as primarily hunter-gatherers who would manage to kill an antelope once every two weeks or something. Agriculture changed our diets significantly, and not necessarily for the healthier (an interesting writer on this subject is Jared Diamond).
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