It's tempting to slice the reality of biology into over-simplistic models, but it's better to realize we have a ways to go. My intent was to point out that much to our chagrin, there is no set of food in which its members are "in no way any less healthy than anything else". What goes in this set and why are you so confident that they can be equated? Just trot out the line "mixtures of protein are all useful to the body"? Biology has only relatively recently established that not all proteins are created equal when held against the metabolic capabilities of a human. That even the context of those proteins matter. The field is only now experiencing an explosion in the ability to make truly meaningful models.
I encourage you to look into the fields of life-extension to reinforce the fact that our bodies and ecologies like them are in no way perfect. There is currently no food that causes absolutely zero health damage. I only mentioned your use of rather (i.e. "to a certain degree") because it seemed funny to then in the same breath claim an absolute---that there is no degree to even consider.
Where gluten lies in all of us this is up for debate because meaningful evidence interpreted in a dependable framework has yet to happen, as much as you'd like to think it's an utterly settled matter.
I'd like to know from what evidence you can state this so confidently. We live in a world where it is well understood that our understanding of human health and what substances are good / bad is not well understood. That's without saying anything in regards to how nutrition relates to how the body is being used, which complicates the matter considerably. How incredibly arrogant.
And why is it "rather" healthy? I thought it causes "absolutely no health damage" for 6.9 of the 7 billion people out there?
Sure, but I'm pretty sure the reason xenoestrogens are "bad" is because they affect the same cellular receptors as naturally occurring hormones, not because they affect estrogen/testosterone levels. Just because we've measured that something isn't the case, doesn't necessarily mean something (else) isn't happening. It could be doing something we just can't measure yet. Who knows what the long-term effects of greater phytoestrogen intake is for an individual? Or for their future offspring?
As others in this thread have alluded to, we're far from having a correct model that we can believe in with high confidence when it comes to nutrition.
I encourage you to look into the fields of life-extension to reinforce the fact that our bodies and ecologies like them are in no way perfect. There is currently no food that causes absolutely zero health damage. I only mentioned your use of rather (i.e. "to a certain degree") because it seemed funny to then in the same breath claim an absolute---that there is no degree to even consider.
Where gluten lies in all of us this is up for debate because meaningful evidence interpreted in a dependable framework has yet to happen, as much as you'd like to think it's an utterly settled matter.