Here’s how and WHY the FDA lied to us about the food pyramid!
For decades, the US government had a simple message about diet: To avoid chronic illnesses
like diabetes, obesity, and heart disease, Americans should cut back on fat.
But was fat ever really the problem here?
The original American food pyramid suggested that the staple food of your diet - that’s
the base of the pyramid – should be anywhere from six to eleven servings of bread, cereal,
rice, and pasta.
That’s every single day!
That’s, well, a LOT of food in general, and definitely a lot of carbs if you actually
think about it.
In the middle, you have fruit and veggies, meat and dairy.
At the top were fats.
You were supposed to eat as little fat as possible.
Well, okay, maybe not as little as possible.
But definitely very sparingly.
Ancel Keys was an American physiologist who studied the influence of diet on health.
HE was the one who introduced the whole notion that a low fat diet is good for your health
dogma back in the 1950s.
His theory was that dietary fat raises cholesterol levels and gives you heart disease.
But guess what?
THAT was never really proven!
Over the next two decades, the scientific evidence supporting this theory remained ambiguous.
However, even with scientific results that were at best ambiguous, the case for fat was
eventually settled not by science but by politics.
It began back in February 1977, when a Senate
committee led by George McGovern published its first edition of ''Dietary Goals for the
United States”.
The committee advised Americans to significantly reduce their fat intake in an attempt to make
the nation as healthy as possible.
The whole thing peaked in late 1984 when the National Institutes of Health officially recommended
that all Americans over the age of 2 eat less fat.
By that time, fat had become extremely unpopular.
It was becoming the guilty culprit for anything unhealthy!
The model American breakfast of eggs and bacon was well on its way to becoming a bowl of
Special K with low-fat milk.
Let’s also add a glass of orange juice and toast!
That was a feast of refined carbs and sugars!
Here’s something interesting to know: Carbs are the only macronutrient your body DOESN’T
need.
Your body can survive on zero carbs for forever.
You can’t survive with zero fat or zero protein!
Why was the food pyramid introduced?
Back in the 1950s, there was an epidemic of middle-aged men dropping like flies because
of heart attacks.
Obviously, that’s not good for any society, so the government was trying to figure out
what exactly was happening.
The cause, at least according to the experts, was too much saturated fat in the diet.
How did they arrive at this assumption?
First, they knew that a heart attack is caused by a blockage in an artery.
They also knew that the plaque that’s causing the blockage was made up mostly of cholesterol.
And because foods that are high in saturated fat also contain cholesterol, they came to
the conclusion that a high-fat diet caused heart disease.
The first dietary guidelines in 1980 were designed specifically to combat heart disease.
At that time, fat was public health enemy number one!
The solution appeared clear: cut down on the fats.
That meant no foods such as butter, whole milk, hamburgers, or steaks.
Consumers zeroed in on low-fat foods.
But that didn't necessarily mean they adopted healthy habits overall.
It’s not like people suddenly started eating spinach and kale over red meat and butter.
They simply just replaced the fat with processed low-fat junk food!
The government basically was endorsing licensed products when it unveiled the food pyramid
in 1992.
Foods such as bread, cereal, rice, and pasta formed the base of the pyramid, suggesting
that carbs should make up the majority of your diet.
So what did companies do?
Of course, they rushed to create products that were low in fat, but high in sugars,
starches, and carbs!
The year the food pyramid debuted, Nabisco introduced its line of low-fat and nonfat
SnackWell's cookies.
They became extremely popular.
Grocery stores could barely keep them in stock!
But even after decades of fat as the main
culprit, Americans are more obese and sicker than ever.
In 2015, roughly 30.3 million adults in the US had diabetes, or around 9.4 percent of
the population at the time.
The obesity rate has more than doubled since 1980 and now hovers between 31 percent and
35 percent.
About a half-million Americans succumb to heart disease every year.
Heart disease is the number one reason why people pass in the US!
The US has become interestingly polarized on the subject of what’s making Americans
fat!
We've been told with certainty by everyone from the surgeon general and the majority
of doctors that fat is bad!
Most people have come to believe with an even bigger certainty that obesity is caused by
the excessive consumption of fat.
On the other hand, there’s the popularity of either high fat or high protein diets.
All of the different diets push some variation of what scientists would call the alternative
hypothesis.
It's not the fat that makes us fat, but rather the carbs!
Carbs are pushed as the real enemy.
This alternative hypothesis identifies the
cause of obesity as precisely those refined carbohydrates at the base of the famous Food
Guide Pyramid: the pasta, rice, and bread, all of the things we’re told should be the
staple of our healthy low-fat diet.
Studies have linked refined carbohydrates to obesity and diabetes.
Remember what we said earlier!
Since the first dietary guidelines were introduced, rates of obesity and diabetes have skyrocketed.
Meanwhile, heart disease, the original reason for the guidelines, has still remained the
number one cause of death in the US.
Is that just a coincidence?!
In 2010, the US Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services
knew they needed to take another look at the issue.
They took a major step toward addressing the public health crisis by dramatically overhauling
dietary guidelines.
They replaced the familiar food pyramid that had formed Americans' eating habits for almost
two decades.
The government came out with a new type of
visual aid and system with ChooseMyPlate.gov.
For the first time, they encouraged people to make fruits and vegetables half of their
diet, while emphasizing smaller portions overall.
But many experts say these recommendations didn't go far enough to address the major
health issues facing Americans.
Scientists and nutritionists are still calling on the USDA and HHS to go further!
They’re calling for the government to openly condemn highly processed junk food, and be
more specific about which foods to eat or avoid.
The food pyramid had called on Americans to eat six to eleven servings of carbs a day.
But the new food plate provides a much simpler method.
When you fill your plate, grains and starch should occupy just one-quarter of it!
Fruits and vegetables should take up half the plate, with protein and fats making up
roughly 25% of it.
So, what’s wrong with the Food Pyramid and
MyPlate?
Almost everything to nutritionists and health experts.
Specifically, the USDA officially promotes a diet that’s still too high in carbs and
too low in healthy fats and protein.
In other words, the government is promoting a diet that’s still relatively the same!
There are plenty of reasons to suggest that the low-fat-is-good-health hypothesis basically
is just wrong.
We’re now in the middle of an obesity epidemic that started around the early 1980s.
This happened to coincide with the rise of the low-fat dogma.
Type 2 diabetes also rose significantly through this period.
Low-fat weight-loss diets have proved in clinical trials and real life to be dismal failures.
On top of it all, the percentage of fat in the American diet has been decreasing for
two decades.
You’re probably wondering, what’s the big deal with carbs?
Well, you would need to understand how carbohydrates affect insulin and blood sugar.
This is basic endocrinology.
Here’s what happens to your body when you eat carbs!
Nowadays, Americans are eating more calories
than ever.
The amount of food we eat ultimately IS what causes us to gain weight.
But each macronutrient has very different effects.
Not all calories are created the same.
Why are Americans eating more?
What IS the secret to keeping weight off?
We’re going to get to that a bit later.
But that’s something the US government had wanted to keep from us!
Kind of reminds us of the secrets Disney doesn’t want us to know!
Find out more by clicking here!
The answer is provided by Endocrinology 101.
Americans in general are simply hungrier than we were in the '70s, and the reason is way
more physiological.
In this case the key is how long people stayed satiated.
When people ate more fat and protein, they stayed full longer.
That’s because it takes the body longer to digest a steak than simple carbs.
Carbs are easily digested by our body, and this affects our blood sugar and insulin.
The primary role of insulin is to regulate
blood-sugar levels.
After you eat carbs, they get broken down into sugar and transported into the bloodstream.
Your pancreas then secretes insulin, which essentially is what delivers the sugar into
cells as fuel for the next few hours.
This is why carbs have a significant impact on insulin and fat doesn’t.
But insulin also regulates fat metabolism
We can’t store body fat without the release of insulin.
Think of insulin as a switch.
When it's on, in the few hours after eating, you burn carbs for energy and store excess
sugars as fat.
When it's off, after the insulin has been depleted, you burn fat as fuel.
So when insulin levels are low, you’ll burn fat.
But that can’t happen when insulin levels are high!
This is where it gets unavoidably complicated.
The fatter someone is, the more insulin their pancreas pumps out after each meal.
And this becomes a never-ending loop.
In effect, the cells become insensitive to the action of insulin.
So someone that’s already obese would need greater amounts of insulin to keep their blood
sugar in check.
So as you gain weight, insulin makes it easier to store fat and harder to lose it.
Insulin also affects hunger, although to what end is another point of controversy.
On the one hand, insulin can indirectly cause hunger by lowering your blood sugar, but how
low does blood sugar have to drop before hunger kicks in?
That's unresolved.
Meanwhile, insulin works in the brain to suppress
hunger.
The theory is that insulin's ability to inhibit appetite would normally counteract its propensity
to generate body fat.
In other words, as you gained weight, your body would generate more insulin after every
meal, and that, in turn, would suppress your appetite.
Theoretically you'd eat less and lose weight.
However, your brain can lose its sensitivity to insulin, just like your fat and muscles
do when they’re continually flooded with insulin.
The higher insulin production that comes with getting fatter would no longer compensate
by suppressing appetite.
That’s because your brain would no longer register the rise in insulin!
For a large percentage of the population,
low-fat diets are counterproductive.
Low fat diets actually make people gain weight!
If you’re not giving your body fat, then guess what it’s gonna do?
Hoard fat!
New research suggests looking at fats in a completely new light.
2010 dietary guidelines committee found strong evidence linking saturated fat with high cholesterol
and increased risk of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.
Type 2 is the type that’s associated with obesity and inactivity.
But a lot of studies’ findings are from correlations, and NOT causations.
How many studies are from eating diets high in fats and no carbs?
Recent studies suggest that avoiding fats isn’t the best thing we can do.
Some researchers also argue that the guidelines' emphasis on specific macronutrients misses
the larger issue of how food is processed.
It’s much more important for the meat you eat to be unprocessed than what its fat content
is.
Actually, the fat content is pretty meaningless.
What’s much more important is how much it's been processed.
Basically, a fat-free over-processed sausage is worse for you than eating pork chops.
Another major problem is the type of fat.
Unsaturated fats are lumped in with the bad fats.
They’re not only essential for you to live but they’ve been linked to lowering “bad”
cholesterol, maintaining steady blood sugar, reducing your chance of heart disease, and
aiding in brain function.
And most importantly, they’ve shown to help you lose weight!
Protein and fat protect you against overeating
by making you full.
And we’ve known this for a while.
Ever since 1825 to be exact!
The book, ''The Physiology of Taste,'' is an 1825 discourse considered among the most
famous books ever written about food.
French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin says that he could easily identify the causes
of obesity.
Apparently, this is because of his experience of 30 years listening to one quote uh…...''stout
party'' after another proclaiming the joys of bread, rice, and potatoes.
This was backed up by his vague observation that Italians tended toward obesity because
they ate so much pasta.
Ancel Keys, the same guy who recommended eating less fats and more carbs, actually noted this.
Italians were among the heaviest population he had ever studied!
For example, the Neapolitans ate only a little lean meat once or twice a week but ate bread
and pasta every day for lunch and dinner.
By the 1970s, you could find articles in scientific
journals describing high rates of obesity in places where diets consisted almost exclusively
of carbs.
The common thinking was that the ideal diet was one that didn’t have excessive sugar
consumption.
It was a diet with plenty of eggs, red meat, chicken, butter, and well-cooked vegetables.
This was the identical prescription Brillat-Savarin put forth in 1825.
Conflicts of Interest So if that’s something scientists figured
out for years, then why were carbs pushed?
For years, the National Institutes of Health had spent several HUNDRED millions of dollars
trying to demonstrate a connection between eating fat and getting heart disease.
Despite what we might think, they weren’t able to do it.
Five major studies revealed no such link.
Few experts now deny that the low-fat message was radically oversimplified.
If nothing else, it effectively ignores the fact that unsaturated fats, such as olive
oil, are relatively good for you.
They tend to elevate your good cholesterol and lower your bad cholesterol.
However, the most interesting research these days doesn't even think that high cholesterol
means much of anything.
There are studies that are saying there’s no link between cholesterol and heart attacks!
People with low cholesterol still get heart attacks anyways!
It turns out that the original Food Pyramid
really was designed for optimal health.
The problem was…...you never got to see it!
In the early 1980’s, nutrition expert Luise Light, was teaching at New York University
when she was recruited by the Department of Agriculture to create a new Food Guide to
replace the “Basic Four Food Groups.”
Light and her team created the original pyramid.
It was designed to promote a diet based on fruits and vegetables, with only limited amounts
of cabs.
The team submitted the original food pyramid to authorities within the USDA for approval.
But when Light saw “her” pyramid in its final form, she was shocked.
The Office of the Secretary of Agriculture had made major changes to it that had nothing
to do with improving health and nutrition.
And it had everything to do with protecting the profits of the giants within the food
industry!
She later discovered that the changes were carefully done to win the acceptance of the
food industry.
For instance, the Agriculture Secretary’s office altered wording to emphasize processed
foods over fresh and whole foods.
They also changed words to downplay the effects of lean meats and low-fat dairy choices.
That’s because the meat and milk lobbies believed it would hurt sales of full-fat products.
They purposefully increased the servings of wheat and other grains to make wheat growers
happy.
The meat lobby got the final word on the color of the saturated fat/cholesterol guideline!
It was changed from red to purple because meat producers worried that using red to signify
“bad” fat would be linked to red meat in consumers’ minds.
The recommendation of 3-4 daily servings of whole-grain breads and cereals was changed
to a whopping 6-11 servings!
That became the base of the Food Pyramid as a concession to the processed wheat and corn
industries.
Luise Light’s nutritionist group placed
baked goods made with white flour, including crackers, sweets and other low-nutrient foods
laden with sugars and fats, at the peak of the pyramid.
Yes, this was at the tip of the pyramid!
They actually had originally recommended that processed goods be eaten sparingly.
In the “revised” Food Guide, they were now made part of the Pyramid’s base!
And changes were also made to the wording of the dietary guidelines.
They changed it from “eat less” to “avoid too much,”.
That gave the processed-food makers some helpful psychology by not limiting the highly profitable
processed foods they’re trying to sell!
Luise Light apparently had made it clear to the USDA that their version of the Food Pyramid
would lead to an epidemic of obesity and diabetes!
When the pyramid was getting revised in 1995, they were under pressure from health advocates
to alter the wording of the pyramid to say “eat less salt and sugar“.
Obviously, the big sugar makers fought this change.
When the revised pyramid was released, it advised people to eat less salt, but instead
quote, “moderate” their sugar intake.
Of course, the USDA claims there are no such conflicts of interest.
But let’s take a look at the subsidies the USDA gives!
The USDA heavily subsidizes corn and soybean growers.
They receive the bulk of the $15 billion annual farm subsidies.
Besides animal feed, the top uses for these two crops are for the production of artificial
sweeteners and hydrogenated oils – two ingredients for which the USDA had recommended only quote,
“limited” consumption.
On the other hand, the USDA recommends that fruits and vegetables should make up the largest
share of your diet.
So how much do fruit and vegetable farmers receive?
Well, these farmers receive no subsidies at all.
So what’s the real solution here?
Really, there’s no magic formula.
If you want to lose weight, you basically just need to eat less.
Yes, the macronutrients that compose the food we eat DO matter.
But ultimately it’s the amount of calories that matter the most.
Eating less and moving more is generally good advice.
Proteins and fats keep you satisfied for longer and don’t make your insulin and blood sugar
levels go on a rollercoaster ride.
But you can still eat too much of fats and proteins and still get obese anyways!
The type of macronutrients again, DO matter, but if you eat too much of anything, it’s
still not going to help!
Here’s what’s next!