Policy on diet questions

Question

There are a lot of questions in the review queue that are marked with the nutrition off topic reason.

Questions on nutrition are off-topic unless they relate directly to exercise.

Some of those questions are not about nutrition, but on diet, although closely related, please note that our help center states:

and it is not about …
[…]
nutrition unrelated to exercise, such as food safety, nutritional needs for children, etc.

but contrary

achieving physique milestones

is part of our on topic items.

I think that most questions on diet fall into this category, as weight loss is a way to achieve a specific physique.

I can see two ways to handle this problem:

• change the item to "achieving physique milestones using exercises"
• accept questions about weight loss, that are not overly specific.

Expanding on the second bullet point:
"How can I decrease my appetite to lose weight" would be on topic, it targets the personal goal of loosing weight, I think it is in our capabilities to answer such a question. "Does green tea helps losing weight?" would be off topic as a good answer needs to look at the nutritional aspects of the item in question, cite studies or something in that line.

This is a very borderline and grey area, but I think that we are closing too many questions that lie in our current sites scope.

Answer 1

While we may be closing some questions that lie within scope, we are starting to let quite a few more that are not in scope get answered instead of flagged/closed, which may mean that we need to look at straight nutrition possibly being acceptable again.

Examples:

Is the combination of Bulletproof coffee and green tea a good one?

I currently fast and have green tea supplements as a morning supplement and maybe a cup or two of breakfast tea during the day, on workout days I use BCAA pre workout. I have read about the benefits of Bulletproof coffee pre workout but think it may be overdoing it on the caffene

There is no fitness related information there, other than "on workout days I add BCAA".

How to gain weight after colorectal surgery,without exercise due to lack of strength. And pain issues? What to eat and how much if 6'2"@175LBS prior. To surgery,105 lbs. After operation loosing weight daily but eating a lot and not absorbing correctly?'

Again, other than he says "without exercise", it is straight nutrition/general health. If you go with your first interpretation, that gaining the weight is a physique milestone, then I fear it would lead to a lot of questions of "I wanna lose/gain 50 lbs, is this diet ok?", which really shouldn't be an on topic question.

Edited: And the first of the questions I suspected would occur in the previous paragraph is now here, with three answers.

What food should be preferred for gaining weight?

I honestly think the standards for being a quality exercise related nutrition question are being relaxed way too much recently.