What Does 'Good for You' Even Mean?
The Boring Edge
We like to simplify things, right?
We want to be able to say this food is good, that one is bad, and move on with our lives. But the truth is that it's rarely that simple, and pretending otherwise is keeping you stuck in a game you can't win.
The Sherbet Moment
I was out at dinner with a few people I'm working with on a project. A bunch of developers who are really smart people in their domain, the kind who can solve complex problems that would make most of us cry.
They were drinking sherbet (flavoured sugar water, essentially) with a few chia seeds floating on top like some kind of health insurance policy.
And someone casually said, "Chia seeds are good for you."
That sentence stuck with me because it annoyed me at first. Here we were, drinking more sugar than our bodies could handle in that window, but feeling better about it because some chia seeds were floating on top like tiny life rafts.
And let me be clear - this is not moral judgment about drinking sherbet. If you are eating ice cream or sherbet or tiramisu or whatever your jam is, just frickin’ enjoy it. There’s no need for guilt. There’s no need for “There’s a few chia seeds in my ice cream and so I win.”
It felt like a shortcut to false virtue, like we were outsourcing "health" to surface-level fixes that let us ignore the obvious problem right in front of us.
Of course, there are plenty of domains where I'm the fool (tons, actually), where I portray similar infantile notions without knowing better because I haven't done the work to understand. So I tried to move past the annoyance and look at what was really happening.
What bothered me more was the scope of the problem, because this wasn't just about chia seeds or sugar water.
I'm always keen on helping people understand and act on their lifestyle choices, but as Feynman says,
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.
And that's exactly what I saw here: smart people fooling themselves because they didn't know how to say "I don't know" and sit with the discomfort of uncertainty.
Emotion, Dressed Up as Logic
So, back to chia seeds and the question that started this whole mess.
Are chia seeds good for you? Well, what the heck does that even mean, and why are we pretending we have a clear answer?
They're not going to kill you, so they're not bad for you in the most basic sense. But what exactly are we comparing them to, and why does that comparison matter?
They're more good, presumably, than white rice or whatever other enemy we've chosen this week in our ongoing war against perfectly reasonable foods.
But again, what are we actually doing with them in real life, not in some laboratory comparison that has nothing to do with how people eat?
Are we eating a kilo of chia seeds? Obviously not, because that's dumb and no one does that. So, is adding a tablespoon of them to something automatically "healthy"? Well, of course not, because it depends entirely on what that something is.
If you toss chia seeds into a sherbet that's loaded with sugar, are they still good for you, or are we just playing make-believe about nutrition?
It's a superficial (and mostly useless) way of looking at things that lets us avoid dealing with the real issues.
Same thing with the bigger craze that's happening now, at least in South India, where millets are replacing rice in many homes like some kind of nutritional revolution.
Take 100 calories of millets and compare them to 100 calories of white rice. Statistically, millets perform better on paper. So we say millets are good for you and rice is bad, case closed.
But again, what are we actually comparing, and does this comparison mean anything in the context of how real people live and eat?
Calories? Micronutrients? Satiety? Blood glucose response? Some vague notion of "health benefits" that changes depending on which study you read last?
And what the heck happened to taste?!?!
This entire context of food is just tangled up with too much emotion that's masquerading as logic. And this emotion is confused because we don't actually know what we're optimising for.
We kind of, sort of, vaguely know that vegetables are good for us. But who the heck said carbs are bad for you, and when did we all agree to that? Who said rice is bad for you and so millets are automatically the answer? Who decided that replacing rice with millets is good for you without considering anything else about your life?
What we really need to ask is not whether individual foods are good or bad, but what does "good for you" mean in the first place.
What Are You Actually Trying to Do?
Here's what I think is happening, and why this whole conversation is backwards from the start.
You're trying to simplify things. Which makes perfect sense because nutrition can't be impossibly complex every single time you eat something. So you create mental models that help you make decisions without having to research every bite.
And mental models aren't meant to be accurate representations of reality. They're meant to be useful working approximations that help you function without losing your mind.
But here's the problem: what are you actually trying to do with your food choices, and how does obsessing over individual ingredients help you get there?
Are you trying to lose weight? Fix your sleep? Reduce fatty liver? Improve migraines? Feel better in your body? Have more energy? Live longer?
The outcome you're aiming for determines the value of any food choice, because there is no "good" or "bad" in a vacuum that applies to everyone in every situation.
And yes, I get it, because when someone asks me for advice, I often respond with the same boring clichés that everyone's heard a thousand times:
Eat more vegetables.
Drink more water.
Eat more protein.
Eat less junk.
Sleep eight hours.
Move your body regularly.
That advice is boring and predictable.
But it's still true, and it's still what most people need to hear.
Because most people haven't mastered the basics that we know work, and if you haven't done the basics consistently, then asking "Are chia seeds good for me?" is completely irrelevant to your actual health.
The Boring Edge
Here's your real job, the foundation that everything else builds on:
✅ Eat vegetables every day, not as a punishment but as a non-negotiable part of how you feed yourself
✅ Drink water throughout the day instead of waiting until you're already dehydrated
✅ Get enough protein to support your body's basic functions and recovery
✅ Sleep seven to eight hours consistently, not just when you don't have anything better to do
✅ Move your body regularly in ways that challenge it without breaking it
✅ Avoid processed crap most of the time, saving it for occasions when you actually want it
This is your 80%, the foundation that determines whether anything else you do will matter. This is the Boring Edge.
Make that your default, not something you do when you remember or when you're motivated. Make that your new normal, the baseline that everything else builds on.
Then, and only then, does the rest start to matter in any meaningful way.
Before you optimise, build your Boring Edge.
Then you can ask about chia seeds, or turmeric, or meal timing, or any other optimisation question that sounds important. Because you've earned the right to optimise by doing the work that actually moves the needle.
But if you're skipping sleep, living on sugar, barely moving your body, and then arguing about whether white rice is better than millets, you're just fooling yourself into thinking you're working on your health.
What Life Looks Like When You Stop Playing the Game
When you stop playing the "good food" game, everything changes in ways you don't expect.
You walk through grocery stores without scanning every label for superfoods or feeling guilty about choosing convenience over perfection. No more guilt spirals over eating rice instead of quinoa, or bread instead of whatever grain is trendy this month.
Food becomes fuel and pleasure, not a moral judgment system that determines whether you're a good person or a failure.
Your mental bandwidth gets freed up for things that actually matter because you're not spending energy on decisions that don't move your life forward. Your grocery shopping becomes simpler - vegetables, protein, basics instead of expensive "health" foods with marketing budgets bigger than most countries' GDP.
You can eat at restaurants without analysing every ingredient or asking the server to explain the preparation method for the rice. Social situations around food become enjoyable again, not anxiety-inducing performances where you have to justify every bite.
Here's the quiet rebellion part: while others are debating superfoods on Instagram and sharing articles about the latest nutritional villain, you're consistently hitting your fundamentals without drama. You become the person who looks healthier without the performance, whose approach becomes boring to others but powerful for you.
You've opted out of the food culture performance entirely, and it feels like freedom.
The deeper transformation happens when you realise you were outsourcing your food decisions to marketing and trends instead of listening to your own body and goals. Now you make choices based on what works for you, what supports your actual life, what helps you feel the way you want to feel.
Food anxiety gets replaced by food confidence, the kind that comes from knowing you're taking care of the basics that matter.
The Last 10-20%
I don't eat carbs at dinner (or breakfast, whatever) sometimes, not because carbs are evil or because some expert told me not to, but because I don't feel great when I do.
That's preference, not principle. That's personalisation based on how my body responds, not dogma that I'm trying to impose on anyone else.
So yes. Chia seeds are good for you, in the same way that most whole foods are good for you when they're part of a diet that covers your basics.
But ask yourself: good for what? Good for you in the way you're using them? Good in the context of everything else you're eating and doing?
If you're not clear on that, if you can't answer those questions without falling back on vague notions of "health," then you're just adding seeds to sugar and calling it health.
End rant.
Very well written & accurate.