Was seasoning forbidden?

I went a month eating nothing but boiled rice, scallops and water.

That's an impressive feat! Unfortunately it tells us only a little about whether scallops give you all the vitamins and minerals you need. From what I understand you will not experience much in the way of scurvy after just one month of being deprived of vitamin C, let alone get a clear picture of the long term results of any lack in the more subtle deficiencies!

I'd love to see some links too. I'd perhaps take for granted that scallops could give the basic minerals we require (seawater has most of the same salts that we need) but the vitamins I'd have expected to be a different story!

Any citations or links?

To Less Wrong: what are your priors on nutrition? Not necessarily what you do, but what your prior life experience and research has led you to believe is actually correct.

I'll start:

Paleo diet is great, except some carbs and gluten are fine in moderation except in a minority (though possible a high minority, like 40%) of people with outlying genetic mutations that make them process carbs improperly (I admit my prior on this is partially determined by my current unwillingness to stop eating pizza and sandwiches). Intermittent fasting helps prevent cancer.

If you eat paleoish with 5-6 servings of diverse fruits and vegetables daily, you might only be deficient in vitamin D, fish oil, Vitamin E, zinc, magnesium, calcium, (and iron for women) potassium, sodium, lithium.

Also, trace minerals are good (such as in ConcenTrace supplement), but there is probably not good evidence on this.

It might be possible to get an almost totally healthy no supplement diet if you were willing to eat lots of organ meat and use a Vitamin D Lamp.

This is a problem with asking practically any question about health, if you have the point of view espoused in your article/website regarding health. Not only will it be the response to any question on nutrition, most questions about other things will get an answer starting with "First, fix your diet!" I know this first hand, since several of my friends have similar points of view.

Not that there's anything wrong with that! What you say is a valid hypothesis, and if that is what you believe than that is what you should answer with your own, different kind of research. It will not be automatically dismissed, and if you convince us that you're right, you'll win. I'd be disappointed if no one tried this in some form.

Also note that even if everything you think about nutrition is correct, that doesn't mean that you can convince a given patient to follow your advice, so recommendations for the rest of us are still highly useful, and even if modern medicine was hopelessly broken a decision must still be made on what to do.

I've posted a critique of the contest's internal assumptions here, along with part of my answer:

http://www.aquatic-ape-diet.com/blog/2011/12/02/critiquing-the-lesswrong-mineral-supplementation-5000-contest/