The basics for maintaining good personal health and weight are actually ridiculously simple. Although hundreds of books have been written about nutrition and diet and monthly magazines crank out stories on these topics decade after decade, the three basic truths young adults need to know about maintaining good health are encapsulated by these ABCs:

A.     Eat properly (eat the right amount and the right types of food).

B.     Maintain your target weight (being significantly overweight or underweight each contributes to an unsavory buffet of health problems).

C.     Exercise properly (engage in the right amount and the right type of physical activity).

The science-based recommendations of doctors, mainstream health professionals, dieticians, and trainers about how to eat properly, maintain your target weight, and exercise properly can each be reduced to thin chapters in what is ultimately a pretty skinny book. Beyond these documented, well-researched basics (and the recommendations that spring from this research) most of the millions of pages written about nutrition, vitamin supplements, special diets, cancer-fighting foods, healthy-heart diets, weight-loss programs, and special exercise programs, are extra chatter. Some of this extra chatter is fine tuning and elaboration, but a great deal of it is misinformation, quackery, or downright fraud.