The most toxic mindset I see currently is a hard binary of thinking. Very few things are truly black or white. Unfortunately this is the type of thinking that dominates our modern world, especially where it pertains to health and longevity.

Everyone is in their camp, holding up their slogans and spouting off about how their opinion is the truest one; the real one; the unbiased one; the most helpful one; the secret to health. This encourages reductionist, emotionally driven black and white thinking— myopic, but not in a good way.

The truth is there are thousands of ways to nurture a healthy vessel, and all of them involve connecting to, listening to, and supporting your body, soul and mind, and none of them involve a rigid diet plan built by someone else.

This is a hard truth because as humans we love our illusions of certainty. We love feeling like we have all the answers, and that our dogma of the day is the only one that matters. What we don’t love is acknowledging that we are the only human on this planet who is responsible for taking good care of our vessel; we don’t want to acknowledge our personal responsibility because then we would have to humble ourselves to admit when we’re wrong, or not doing enough, or making lazy or uninformed choices that come with consequences to our health.

But what I hate most about binary thinking is the false dualism of the world it presents.

Meat is good; so plants are bad.

Industrially hyper-processed seed fats cause disease, weight gain, and inflammation; so all fat is bad.

Sugar paired with highly processed foods wreak havoc in our bodies; so all sugar is bad.

Being overweight is unhealthy and predisposes you to adverse health conditions; so any amount of excess fat is bad.

Heavily sprayed, GMO, WGA, “enriched” or “fortified” flour products make me sick; so all gluten and flour products are bad for me.

In ethics this type of thinking is called a logical fallacy.