As the servings of studies, research and scientific evidence concerning what we should and shouldn’t eat continue to be dished out by the experts, one indisputable fact has emerged:

There’s a smorgasbord of nutritional advice to satisfy every taste.

Eggs and dairy products are good for you. Eggs and dairy products are bad for you. Grains are great. No they’re not. Eat your veggies and avoid red meat. Eat red meat and avoid veggies.

The other day, for instance, I read a story that said we should eat the way our ancestors ate before the development of agriculture. I’m not sure what our ancestors ate before the invention of agriculture. Nuts? Berries? Tyrannosaurus rex burgers?

Advocates of this Paleolithic diet say we should avoid grains, dairy, processed foods, sugar and legumes and switch to saturated fat. Which is, of course, anathema to most experts, who consider saturated fat only slightly less toxic than eating a bowl of arsenic.

But other experts, following in the meaty footsteps of the Atkins and South Beach diets, say the anti-fat people have it all wrong.

“The evidence to support eating grains is underwhelming,” insists one doctor, citing a Harvard study that says refined grains are worse for us than animal fats.

Deciding which nutrition expert to believe wasn’t nearly as confusing when I was growing up.

The only expert who counted back then was Mom, who knew for a fact that a healthy diet consisted of eggs for breakfast, bologna sandwiches on white bread for lunch, macaroni and cheese for dinner five days a week, liver and onions on Saturday and roast beef with mashed potatoes on Sunday. All washed down with glasses of whole milk. It’s probably a miracle my generation made it out of puberty.

If there’s one thing upon which we can agree today, it’s that Americans weigh too much and a lot of the blame for that has been traced to fast-food restaurants.

But even that’s confusing.

On the same day I read about the Paleolithic diet, I spotted a story refuting the belief that poor people are more likely to be overweight because they can only afford fast food. It cited a study indicating that truly poor people can’t afford to eat at fast-food chains and that people with higher incomes visited them more often. Which explains that Rolls Royce I got stuck behind the last time I drove through Taco Bell.

The Paleolethic diet does sound tempting, but I’m not convinced eating like a cave man is a good idea. I don’t know what the life expectancy of a caveman was, but I’m guessing that few of them lived long enough to use their Medicare benefits.

Contact D.L. Stewart at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com.