I was driving through hot, bright, rural Kechi last weekend, listening to my passenger, and recent Elliott School alumna, Maci Ward, share a nutritionist’s advice.

According to Maci, the nutritionist claims that the healthiest way to eat any food is with similar foods. That is, you should eat carbs with carbs, proteins with proteins and so on.

In our health-manic culture, it seems like everyone has an expert source who’s unlocked the real secret to healthy eating — and every piece of advice is different.

People use the term “health food” like there’s an international standard for what makes food healthy. For people on the path to eating healthier, deciding to change their diet is the easy part. The hard part is actually figuring out what to eat.

I’ve spent years trying to eat a healthy diet. I’ve found there isn’t a formula or a rigid set of rules — diets are different for everyone. The only real way to eat well is to educate yourself about food.

The butter your grandma pounds into every meal she cooks isn’t necessarily bad for you, most salads are pretty pointless, and dairy is all-around terrible for everyone.

The food pyramid you learned about in elementary school was propaganda. Human beings have no business consuming — as suggested by the pyramid — three servings of dairy, three servings of meat, five servings of vegetables, four servings of fruit and 11 servings of grains every day. That’s completely insane.

The food pyramid was — and probably still is — a marketing campaign aimed at children to implant the belief that cheap, dry, bleached, processed wheat and corn products are the cornerstone of a good diet — also completely insane.

The key to food — and life — is moderation. Brown rice is generally understood to be a healthier alternative to white rice, and it is, unless you binge eat nothing but brown rice every day.

Sugar is understood to be unhealthy, which isn’t true — human bodies need sugar. The sugar in a hand full of fruit, once a day, is good for you.

Vegetables are thought to be healthy, and they are, unless they were grown in a haze of harsh chemicals somewhere in Asia, frozen, and shipped six thousand miles to a McDonalds in Kansas. Then they’re no longer healthy — or vegetables, really.

After moderation comes variation. Eat different foods. Eat as many different foods as you can.

Go to the store and buy fresh foods every color of the rainbow. Buy fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts and fresh meat.

As you shop, silently scoff at other shoppers who push around carts filled with diet Pepsi, Cheetos and frozen mini-burgers. As you pass them in the isle, think to yourself “good thing you’re getting diet, that’ll balance everything out” — then feel bad about being mean. Think new thoughts about how they probably never had an opportunity to learn about nutrition — then feel good about yourself again.

Most people eat the same few ingredients in different forms for every meal. Corn is the best example of this. It’s in everything. You think you’re drinking lemonade? You’re actually drinking liquid corn. Tastes like ketchup? It’s corn. Ever eaten corn on the cob? Guess what hotshot — there’s corn in that, too. Your car runs on corn and your shampoo is made out of corn. You feed your dog salmon-flavored corn every morning then pour liquid corn in your coffee.

Pay attention to what you’re eating — really, really pay attention. Don’t eat something because the packaging is made out of recycled corrugated cardboard and the profits supposedly go to a charity you’ve never heard of. Don’t buy something because it has the word “smart” in the name or “natural” printed on the box.

Take a friend’s expertise and a nutritionist’s advice with a grain of salt. Buy fresh food that was grown or raised locally. Eat in moderation and eat in variation. Do research, read labels and get so healthy that you essentially become immortal.