> "To the degree that we are unhealthy it is 99.9% a function of simple things on which there is no complexity nor disagreement."

What would you expect to see different in the world if that wasn't true, how would you know? You accept that smoking causes slow cumulative damage which doesn't show until decades later, and maybe that sugar in the diet can(?) but you reject the idea that something else in food could be doing the same? Why do you claim there is no disagreement when there's clearly a lot of disagreement about dietary and nutritional advice, and part of that is because it is complex?

For one slightly off-topic example, common advice is to eat fibre to cure constipation. Yet here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3435786/ in the World Gastroenterology Journal is a study of 63 people who reduced dietary fibre and improved their constipation. Not only that, the authors say ""Whilst it is often stated in physiology textbooks that bulking agents improve peristalsis, there is no proof of this in practice nor experimentally.". It's 2023, it shouldn't be possible to have such a disagreement, and you can't get away from it by just saying "there is no disagreement".

> "By your definition someone who treats a condition having nothing whatsoever to diet is ill if he takes a prescription but well if he does not. A good example would be allergy medication."

Here's a place where there is disagreement, for example. I can google "carnivore healed allergies" and find claims: "Laura healed her allergies on a carnivore diet" - https://carnivore.diet/laura-healed-allergies-asthma-gi-issu...

or "vegan healed allergies": "How a vegan diet can eliminate allergies" - https://www.crvitality.com/2019/01/going-vegan-cured-my-alle...

or various others:

"How changing your diet in a keto way can ease allergies" - https://perfectketo.com/diet-allergies/

"Foods that may help curb your allergies" - https://www.webmd.com/allergies/features/foods-fight-allergi...

"How to get rid of allergies with diet, Dr Paul Young" - https://paulyoungmd.com/how-to-get-rid-of-allergies-with-die...

"These 7 Foods Might Help Alleviate Seasonal Allergy Symptoms" - https://www.healthline.com/health/seasonal-allergies-best-fo...

"“Microdosing” Kids with Peanut Allergies May End Risk of Serious Reactions" - https://www.verywellfamily.com/microdosing-kids-with-peanut-...

These are of course biased self-interested self-promotional sites, but if allergies have "nothing whatsoever to do with diet" these shouldn't exist at all, there should be no results from studies microdosing kids with peanut protein, and nobody would be testing that because eating peanuts can't cause or cure allergies. Certainly there's a non-trivial amount of people who think allergies can be affected by diet. Where's the convincing, conclusive, studies that say it can't be? Can there even be such studies proving a negative? Food is the main way we put things into our bodies, enormous numbers of molecules of it every day, the idea that such a thing couldn't affect our body's reaction to things is odd.

> "More ridiculous yet if said medication became available over the counter it would magically make him well again. It's not like other metrics aren't available to more directly measure."

Taking OTC medications wouldn't magically make him well again, nor did I say it would, what are you talking about?

> "The honest truth is you can be fairly healthy just by doing the things we already know are unambiguously true. Eat reasonable portions. Don't eat the shit tons of sugar we all eat. Exercise. Don't live on obviously unhealthy fast food. Don't smoke or vape. Maintain a healthy weight which is nearly entirely a function of getting enough exercise and not eating too many calories."

In the USA there are 28 million diabetics, 96 million pre-diabetics, 14 million with severe depressive episodes in a year, 23 million people with autoimmune conditions. 240 million overweight. 100 million obese. The USA has 7% of population with an autoimmune condition, Japan has 2%. And Japan's population skews older. You might expect exercise to improve diabetes, but not to prevent or cure autoimmune conditions, right? Yet anecdotally people do cure 'incurable' diseases with diets - carnivore or vegan or fruitarian being the most common extreme ones but also ones which don't work for a lot of people.

Your answer is like the "I became rich, and if I can, anyone can. I started with an ice cream van" of millionaire Duncan Bannatyne. Yes, nobody else had thought of running an ice cream van before, it's so easy. Yours is the "I exercise and eat kale and I'm healthy, so everyone who doesn't is just lazy and impulsive". Ignoring that there are lots of other people who do, and aren't. Like the original guy I mentioned who bicycled to work every day, ate vegetables, didn't smoke or vape or binge drink, and became increasingly ill and then chronically ill and tried to fix it by eating more vegetables and drinking more dairy and exercising more (until he couldn't anymore).