The effect of all this, day after day, year after year, is a perception that all kinds of contradictory evidence is coming up every day—and that each bit is roughly equally valid.

Of course, it’s not. Eating in ways that are good for our bodies isn’t conceptually complicated. It’s complicated by money and time and access—but eating based on scientific findings is not. Though recently you might have heard otherwise. There is new news about dietary health, and that news is more important than the typical weekly nutrition news. But it doesn’t upend conventional wisdom.

This week, the world learned the results of an enormous study of food and health. The study included 135,335 people from 18 different countries across five continents who were followed for seven years. It’s known as the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology study, or PURE, and the results were presented at the European Society of Cardiology meeting in Barcelona and published in The Lancet.

The practically important findings were that the healthiest people in the world had diets that are full of fruits, beans, seeds, vegetables, and whole grains, and low in refined carbohydrates and sugar.

Melissa d'Arabian / AP

As a writer and a reader, though, this is very boring. If I pitched that to my editor, he would laugh at me. What is new here? Why is this interesting? You know what would be novel? You getting fired! Now get out there and find me a story, dammit!

Let’s look at the internet. The coverage of the study was mostly fine, but the headlines alone promise novelty. Stat ran “Huge New Study Casts Doubt on Conventional Wisdom About Fat and Carbs.” Reuters ran “Study Challenges Conventional Wisdom on Fats, Fruits, and Vegetables.” Medscape ran “PURE Shakes Up Nutritional Field: Finds High Fat Intake Beneficial.” Even the editors at The Lancet used the headline “PURE Study Challenges the Definition of a Healthy Diet.”

Does it?

These assertions are all predicated on the idea that most people’s definition of “healthy diet” is “low fat.” That was the recommendation from the USDA in the 1990s. But given that there have been a lot of nutrition studies and books and stories since then, that idea has been disproved again and again. There is still some disagreement over exactly how much of various types of fats are optimal for human health in which populations, but the differences are academic.

In a press release, the study’s lead author, Mahshid Dehghan of McMaster University, described the study’s novelty relative to the World Health Organization’s dietary recommendations: “The current focus on promoting low-fat diets ignores the fact that most people’s diets in low- and middle-income countries are very high in carbohydrates, which seem to be linked to worse health outcomes,” she said, noting that in these countries, “guidelines should refocus their attention toward reducing carbohydrate intake, instead of focusing on reducing fats.”