The Food Pyramid is a Lie, Part 1 - History.

You've struggled with weight your whole life, or maybe your whole adult life. You're not necessarily fat, although you might be, but either way you'd like to lose some weight. You eat the foods you were taught were healthy, at least as much as you can, and you've probably tried numerous diets all that have left you hungry, depressed, and absolutely longing for the day when you can go off them. And yet, at the end of it all, you still haven't seen the results you were hoping for and your doctor is STILL telling you to lose some weight.

Sound familiar?

If it does, you aren't alone. For nearly an entire generation, everything we've been told about food and healthy diets by our governments and many scientists is wrong.

But let's back up a little bit. A little bit of history is necessary to put what we're going to talk about here into perspective.

In the US, government nutrition recommendations are made by the US Department of Agriculture. I suppose that might not seem like such a bad choice. They oversee the production of the food, they should know a thing about it. Maybe they do, but they aren't sharing that information with us.

The USDA released their first set of nutrition guidelines in 1894. This was before science understood much about the body's interaction with and need for specific vitamins and minerals, and long before science understood human metabolism well enough to explain WHY a certain diet was healthy or not healthy. Much of it was guesses, pure and simple. This first nutrition guide emphasized foods rich in nutrients and recommended restricting intake of fat, sugars and starches.

 After a few variations on that original idea, in 1943 the USDA gave us the BASIC 7. The BASIC 7 was somewhat an attempt to help people maintain some kind of healthy diet during the food rationing of World War II. The BASIC 7 broke food into 7 food groups, and suggested that people eat some from all the groups every day. That's it. Just eat a some of everything on the chart and you'll be ok.

This might seem like an overly simplistic view of nutrition considering what we (think we) know about nutrition today. In reality it was probably better than what they push on us now.

In 1956, the USDA decided that there was actually only 4 food groups, and revised their nutrition recommendations again. Those 4 food groups are as follows:

1. Vegetables and Fruits - This makes no sense. Fruits and vegetables do not fit the same dietary role.
2. Milk and Dairy.
3. Meat and proteins - Ok, I can get behind this one, but there should be a mention of fats here too, as they are critical to body growth and function.
4. Cereals and Breads - This group constitutes pretty much everything made from grain.

And then there's the "other foods" category, including pretty much everything else. This would include condiments such as ketchup and jelly, also oils, butter, etc.

With the Basic 4, the USDA started making serving suggestions, recommending just how much of each you should have of each. The Basic 4 was heavy on cereals and breads, and equally on fruits and vegetables.

In 1992 the USDA whipped out the work of genius that is the Food Pyramid. This new recommendation laid out plainly how much of each group you should be eating relative to the other groups. Unlike the previous version that weighted fruits/vegetables and cereals equally, this new pyramid distinguishes between fruits and vegetables, giving recommendations for each. The biggest change is that according to the USDA, the foundation of a healthy diet is now breads, cereals, and other products made from grain. Remember this.

This is where what most people know about nutrition stops. Most of us were taught either the Basic 4 or the Food Pyramid as children, and this is what we base our diets on. This idea of a healthy diet has been ingrained in our minds, and is reinforced by what is available in stores and government policy. I don't think for a moment that the scientists at the USDA ever actually BELIEVED that this is the path to a healthy diet, but at least there was some kind of attempt to get there.

In 2005 the USDA revised their food pyramid and changed the name to "MyPyramid". This new incarnation still keeps cereals and grain based foods as the foundation, but increased the recommendations for vegetables and dairy products. In reality, the differences between the recommended shares for each group, with the exception of meat products, is negligible. In that way, this new pyramid is very similar to the Basic 7. If you look at the graphic below, and you try to figure out just how much of something you're supposed to eat, you end up feeling like you should pretty much split it all equally, and maybe just have a little less meat. This is in line with most of what we've been told about nutrition for the last 20 years, that protein is good but fat is bad and since protein comes with fat we have to limit our intake of it. Over the course of this blog, I'm going to explain why this is complete nonsense.

So, that's the very short version of the history of the USDA's nutrition recommendations. My opinion, and that of many others, is that this is pretty much all garbage. Our belief is that this food pyramid, and every other version of it going back to the Basic 4 were developed not to promote healthy Americans, but to promote the US Agriculture industry. The USDA is not solely to blame here. Congress has had a very big part to play in the intentional deception of America into thinking they are eating healthy. Here's a couple of thoughts that back this position.

In 2011, congress blocked an attempt by the USDA to revise the school lunch program. Thanks to multi-million dollar lobbing efforts by large food companies like Schwan's and Con-Agra foods, congress was able to protect the status quo for those companies. The status quo being that pizza sauce counts as a vegetable. No joke. Pizza sauce is a vegetable according to the US Congress. And here's the link to back it up.  NYTIMES - Congress Blocks New Rules on School Lunches

Read that. It will probably make your blood boil. Every time I think about it I grab a pitchfork and look for my nearest congressperson...

The promotion of cereals to the largest share of the food pyramid coincides perfectly with other USDA policies promoting heavy production of grains in the US. Pre-1900, starches and carbohydrates in general were viewed as unhealthy in large portions. But in the 1930s with the introduction of the combine and other self propelled mechanized farm machinery, production skyrocketed. But let's not forget that the USDA is also responsible for promoting the products that American farmers grow! Boy it sure would be easy for them to tell farmers to grow grain, and then tell Americans to eat a lot of grain. Solved both problems at once! Science be damned... But all the grain has to go somewhere! The USDA has to make sure there's a market to support the farmers, and they have. You.

Let's review a few relevant points:

1. Government nutrition guidelines haven't really changed in 60 years.
2. The USDA has a HUGE conflict of interest between supporting modern industrial agriculture and telling Americans what we should eat.
3. Congress has no shame whatsoever and will step in to legislate nutrition to benefit large corporate donors.
4. Americans are getting fatter and fatter.
5. Many who try to lose weight on a supposed "healthy" diet simply can't. It doesn't work.

Conclusion: Pretty much everything we've ever been taught about a healthy diet is a lie.

In Part 2, we are going to go even further back in history to study the diets of ancient man, and then go into more detail about specifically WHY the modern food pyramid does not lead to a healthy diet, and why eating such a diet might actually kill you.

The Food Pyramid is a Lie, Part 2 - The Evolution of Man

Before we get too far into this, I want to say that many of the things I am going to say here are not in any dispute scientifically. This stuff is well documented, peer reviewed, and as close to irrefutable as we can get, considering the circumstances. Of course the USDA and most governments disagree, but they will not provide quality scientific evidence to back their claims.

Starting at the beginning. The real beginning. When man evolved, distinguishing itself from its ancestors, its diet was made up of whatever it could kill or find growing wild. Man is naturally an omnivore, something that the vegans would love to argue with but can't, due to the presence of canine teeth. Those teeth didn't evolve to better separate salad from its stalk. Early man ate WHATEVER it could get its hands on. Until the discovery and development of agriculture, this state of affairs remained pretty much unchanged. Early man's meal choices were largely determined by what grew naturally and what it could kill. This is the definition of hunter/gatherer. This means that early hominids had a very seasonal diet. In summer, it's safe to guess that there were lots of greens, some berries, as well as fish and birds, and red meat. In fall, one would expect that fruits and nuts became a large part of the diet. In winter, northern populations would likely be restricted to entirely red meat and fat diets.

This is NOT bad for you.

Now, I don't have to simply speculate about this. I can prove it. The first true man, Homo habilis, is known to have eaten meat and bone marrow. We know this because we know they used stone tools to cut flesh from bones of animals. (http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/evidence-for-meat-eating-by-early-humans-103874273)

So early man was a true omnivore. According to the same Nature article referenced above, early man's diet consisted of "large quantities of fruit, leaves, flowers, bark, insects and meat", as well as "Tooth morphology and dental microwear studies suggest that the diet of some hominins may have included hard food items such as seeds and nuts, and underground storage organs (USOs) such as roots and tubers."

One thing that all of these food sources have in common, with the exception of fruit (which was seasonal) and the possible exception of roots and tubers (because we can't say for certain which roots and tubers were eaten), is that they do not contain large amounts of simple carbohydrates. This is important because that means that the bulk of the caloric intake of early man was made up of proteins and fats (especially in populations in Europe), with some natural sugars (fructose) and probably some starches (tubers and roots). It doesn't exactly require close scrutiny to see that this is almost a complete reversal from our modern diet that emphasizes carbohydrates and tells us that fats will kill us and red meat is bad for us.

Have you ever wondered about those populations of people who live in the WAY north? Inuit especially. There aren't a lot of greens, fruits, vegetables and berries growing on the shores of Hudson Bay, Greenland, or the north slope of Alaska. Those people and their ancestors live and have lived for upwards of 30,000 years on a diet consisting almost entirely of animal products.  A 25 year study was done of Inuit in the district of Upernavik, Greenland. Approximately 1800 people were included in that study between the years of 1950 and 1974. During that time, only 1 case of diabetes was found. Comparably, a random sample of Europeans would be expected to produce 9 cases of diabetes. These tests in Greenland were done on people who had grown up and lived a subsistence lifestyle, primarily feeding themselves by hunting. With the westernization of the Greenland Inuit diet, this changed. A similar study was done on various populations of Greenland Inuit between 1991 and 2001. That study reported that 9.7% of participants were diabetic. In 25 years, the diabetes rate of Greenland's Inuit went from 0.00056% to 9.7%. Like, WOW, man. And here's the reference: http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/25/10/1766.long

The question then, is what caused this? Inuit people, prior to the mid 1900s lived almost the exact same lifestyle that they had lived for tens of thousands of years. This gives us a very direct link to history, and a clear visual of those peoples' diet. We know what they ate in the 1950s, so we can know pretty much what they ate 10,000 years ago. It's safe to say that the Inuit diet has for a very very long time consisted almost entirely of fats and proteins. Well what happens when you start adding sugars and refined starches (carbohydrates) into that diet?

It's time that we talk about something called the glycemic index, and I'm going to simplify this somewhat so that it doesn't become boring. Everything you eat is broken down into something that your body can use for energy. Your body doesn't use a cheeseburger for energy, or even cheese or burger or bun. It has to be reduced to something that your cells can take in and use for energy. In the case of carbohydrates, they are (with the exception of fiber and some kinds of resistant starches) broken down into glucose. Different foods are broken down at different rates and into different amounts of glucose. The glycemic index is a scale that goes from 0 to 100 that measures the effect that a food has on your blood sugar levels. Pure glucose is 100. Table sugar, which is sucrose (sucrose if half fructose and half glucose), is about 68. If something has no carbohydrates and no sugar in it, like a steak (non-marinaded of course) it has an effective glycemic index (GI) of 0. A baked potato, on the other hand, has a GI of about 85. How can that be? Potatoes don't contain sugar? They don't have to. The starches in potatoes, refined flours, breads, grains, etc, are all broken down by your body, quite quickly, into glucose. This means that you will have higher blood glucose levels, and expectedly a higher glucose spike by eating a baked potato than you would from eating a similar amount of calories of table sugar.

So let's go back to our friends the Inuit of Greenland. For thousands of years, they consumed nearly no carbohydrates as part of their normal diet. Then along comes the western agricultural diet, heavy on grains and cereal products. Soda and potato chips are flown and shipped in and become snacks. What happens when we throw high GI foods at a people that have never eaten them? Their blood sugar spikes. Their body goes HOOOOLY MOOOOLY WHAT IS THIS, and floods their bloodstream with insulin to offset that huge spike in blood glucose levels. After a few years or maybe decades of this, they develop insulin resistance, and eventually diabetes.

So what does this have to do with you? A lot. The same thing is happening to you to some degree. Oh, you might have a better genetic resistance to diabetes, and you might be a few thousand more years removed from the time your ancestors gave up the hunter/gatherer lifestyle and became farmers, but that isn't sufficient time for Homo sapiens to evolve into an animal whose metabolism is geared towards running solely and primarily on glucose. For 99.8 percent of the evolutionary history of mankind, our bodies have found their energy primarily in fats and proteins. And thanks to our governments, the USDA, and some others, your body is powered by industrial agriculture and their products, primarily wheat, barley, and corn -- carbohydrates. This has significant health consequences and most of the general public knows nothing about them. Americans are getting fatter, we're getting diabetes, heart disease, and our life expectancy is actually shrinking. We're told it's because of this and that and sometimes we're even told that it's because of our food, here eat this bowl of oatmeal and you'll be healthier. But it's not true. That oatmeal won't make you healthier. Here take this cholesterol medication before you have a heart attack, never mind that there is zero scientific evidence that statin cholesterol medications reduce the risk of heart attack. It just treats a symptom that our society has been bludgeoned to believe is dangerous. What they won't tell you is that it's not that cheeseburger that's making you fat and raising your risk of heart attack. It's the bun and french fries that you ate with it.

Now, before you write me off as an Atkins disciple or some kind of nutter, understand that I'm not saying that the only way to eat is to have NO carbohydrates in your diet. Clearly there were many populations of early man who did eat carbohydrates in the form of fruits, berries, etc. You probably have genetic makeup to allow you to do this and thrive as well. Our bodies will not break down because of one piece of bread or an apple. But for a typical American, somewhere between 60% and 75% of your calories come from carbohydrates. I'm not going to flat out tell you that this is bad for you. I'm not going to tell you that this is hurting you. I'm going to ask you to use your own functioning brain and ask yourself what you think? So your health isn't what it should be, are you going to follow the advice of a government organization that exists to promote the consumption of agricultural products to decide what is best for your health, or are you going to look to history to see what your "natural" diet should be?

In Part 3, we're going to talk a little bit about what happens to your body when you eat something more in line with what it evolved to eat, and attempt to explain, without getting too complicated, the state of ketosis.

The Food Pyramid is a Lie, Part 3 - The Low Carbohydrate Diet

If the typical western high carbohydrate diet isn't the way to go, then that doesn't leave us many options. Realistically, the vast majority of calories available for digestion and conversion to energy in the human body fall into one of three categories. Carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Oh the dreaded fats. Modern medicine, including the American Heart Association, pretty much every family doctor, and most nutritionists would have you believe that high levels of fats in your diet cause heart attacks. If I go to my doctor and he says that I have high cholesterol and triglycerides, he will undoubtedly tell me to lower my fat intake, specifically saturated fats. But what if that's not necessarily true?

What if I told you that if you have high cholesterol and you're overweight, one of the best ways for you to lower your cholesterol levels, and specifically your LDL (bad) cholesterol levels is to switch to a low carbohydrate diet and plan your meals so that the majority of your calories come from fats and proteins? What if I told you that you can eat steaks, hamburgers, brats, bacon, pork chops, fish, nuts, cheese and similar foods, and that your cholesterol levels would go down to a healthier level and you would lose weight more easily? This seems to fly in the face of everything we've been taught about nutrition, but it's true.

It's well documented that a low carbohydrate diet high in fats and proteins will improve your cholesterol levels and presumably reduce your risk of heart disease and heart attack. It will also help you lose weight. Don't believe me? Read this: http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/4/1/23

A direct quote:
"Low carbohydrate diets (LCD) are associated with a fat intake percentage that typically exceeds orthodox recommendations. LCDs represent a way to reduce caloric intake, promote weight loss, and reduce the atherogenicity of the plasma lipid profile. The meta-analysis of studies between January 1, 1980 and February 28, 2005 by Nordmann et al [6] demonstrated that relative to low-fat energy restricted diets, LCDs have a better efficacy for weight loss promotion and improved plasma lipid profiles than low-fat diets during the first six months of administration [6]. LCDs have been demonstrated to lead to significant improvements in the plasma lipid profile and, presumably, CHD risk [7-10]. The benefits of LCDs on the lipid profile have been shown to occur independently of weight loss [9,11]."

But...   Why?
Well here is how this works, in a somewhat simplified manner. Let's start with a person, man or woman doesn't matter, age 35 who is overweight. Let's say they need to lose 50 pounds to get to something resembling a healthy weight. This person probably has elevated blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, and is working on a start to diabetes with some measurable insulin resistance. Now this doesn't mean that our test subject is going to drop dead next week, but he/she is clearly not on a path to live a long, healthy, active life.

A typical meal for our test subject, who we will call Kelly, probably consists of something like a cheeseburger and fries, or perhaps something really carby like spaghetti and garlic bread. Kelly is hungry, Kelly eats a filling meal. Because of the high carbohydrate levels in the potatoes, bun, noodles and bread, shortly after eating, Kelly's blood sugar spikes. As we know, most of the carbohydrates in a western diet are easily and quickly converted to glucose. Kelly's body reacts to this large amount of fuel in the blood stream by storing some of it as fat. At about this same time, Kelly's pancreas dumps a large amount of insulin to deal with this spike of glucose in the bloodstream. Over a short amount of time, perhaps an hour, Kelly's blood sugar starts to drop, and then as insulin levels spike, blood sugar crashes. Insulin levels spike higher than they need to because Kelly is somewhat insulin resistant. Around this time, Kelly's blood has very little glucose for cellular energy, making her feel tired. At the same time, the high insulin levels are actually preventing her body from burning her own fat for energy. That's one of the things that insulin does. After the blood sugar crashes, while insulin levels are high, Kelly starts to feel hungry again. It's only been maybe 2 hours since eating a nice 1500 calorie dinner, and our friend Kelly is already hungry. Well not really, but Kelly's body thinks so. So, Kelly eats a snack, adding another 300 calories to the total for the day. Blood sugar spikes again, and the whole process repeats itself. The high carbohydrate diet has short-circuited Kelly's body process, it simply wasn't designed to eat these kinds of foods.

It's pretty easy to see why a person in the above situation would have a hard time losing weight. To add insult to injury, such a person has also done nothing to improve their insulin resistant state and are working on developing diabetes.

Is it as simple as reducing carbohydrates in the diet? Pretty much, yes. A low carbohydrate diet forces the body to use fat for energy instead of glucose, often putting the body into a state called ketosis. In ketosis, the body converts fats to various types of ketone bodies, which the body uses for energy. There is no glucose/insulin roller coaster at all. Not all low carbohydrate diets will induce ketosis, but even without ketosis, the benefits of low carb diets will make it easier to eat less, and without the insulin spikes will allow the body to burn more of its own fat stores for energy. Combine this with the documented benefits of improving cholesterol levels, such a person would be well on their way to improving their overall health.

If this seems at all unnatural to you, think back to our pre-industrialized Inuit population, a people who spend their entire lives in a state of ketosis. A people who traditionally had a near zero incidence of diabetes and heart disease, all while getting most (~75%) of their calories from fat.

Whale blubber - pure fat and a staple of the traditional Inuit diet.

So where does this leave us? Many have suggested a new food pyramid, and it's not just those who use ketogenic diets for weight loss, it also includes many doctors, nutritionists, and scientists who believe that a low carb diet is healthier overall. In Part 4, we will talk about that nutrition plan and just how to make it happen.

The Food Pyramid is a Lie, Part 4 - The New Food Pyramid

If I've made any case at all for the argument that the modern high carbohydrate, grain based diet is at least part of the cause of escalating rates of obesity at all ages, diabetes, heart disease, and possibly even depression, not to mention simply unnatural, then I have to make a proposal for a solution to this problem. Let nobody accuse me of pointing out problems without offering solutions. Simply suggesting that most people need to eat less carbohydrates in their diet isn't a clear or viable solution, if for no other reason than because it's just plain old difficult to do without some help. High carbohydrate foods are simply everywhere. Almost everything that comes to mind as a snack food is too high in carbohydrate calories to fit into a low carb diet.

Bacon and Eggs - An example of my typical low carb breakfast.

So I'm going to tell you what I do, what my wife does, and what we suggest to others when they ask. There are no hard and fast rules, but there are some guidelines to a ketogenic diet.

A ketogenic diet, which is very similar to a paleo diet, focuses on the goal of using fat, and secondarily protein to produce the body's energy. To put it into numbers, your total caloric intake from carbohydrates should be about or less than 5% of your total caloric intake. Put another way, for every 100 grams of food, no more than 5 grams of it should be carbohydrates. These don't correlate directly, as this doesn't account for indigestible fiber, but it gets you pretty close. For most people this means a target of 20 grams or less of net carbohydrates in a daily 2000 calorie diet to get you in the target range. Your own caloric needs will vary, but 2000 is a good place to start. Net carbohydrates is total carbohydrates minus fiber, as fiber is indigestible and passes right through your body. As a comparison, the USDA recommendation is 45-65% of total calories should come from carbohydrates. We're shooting for 5%. Big difference. This means that what you eat is going to change dramatically. But this does not mean that you have to eat weird foods, take diet pills, drink special shakes, or eat the same things every day.

The easiest way to accomplish this is just to read the nutrition labels on things. I promise, it doesn't take long to learn what's in your food. If something doesn't have a label, as in the case of fresh foods like vegetables, look it up. There are myriad sources in the form of books and websites dedicated to this information. A very good one is myfitnesspal.com

Examples of things not to eat:
Bread
Noodles
Potatoes
Chips
Crackers
Tortillas
Sugary soda

Examples of things TO eat:
Meat
Eggs
Nuts
Vegetables
Avacados
Fish and shellfish
Cheese


Above all else, it's important to know what's in your food and reading labels is the key to this. Whether you choose a true ketogenic diet, or simply a low carbohydrate diet constituting less than 100 grams of carbohydrates per day, you're going to have to change the way you eat.

From this, we can start to picture a new food pyramid:

The foundation of this diet is foods that contain both fats and proteins. Generally this means red meats, white meats such as chicken, eggs, and fish, as well as cheese. There is an ideal ratio of fats to proteins, but in general, it's accurate to say that there should be more calories from fats than from proteins. Fats are first, proteins are second.

Third is vegetables, especially high fiber green vegetables.

And last is sugars. Not all sugars are created equally. Sucrose (table sugar) is half glucose and half fructose. Obviously this provides a sudden flood of glucose to the body and should be avoided. Lactose (milk sugar) is better, and even though it is a sugar and a carbohydrate, the glycemic index of lactose is low enough that you can have an 8 oz glass of milk (ideally whole milk) on occasion. Fructose (fruit sugar) has a very low glycemic index, around 19. If you crave sweets, an apple or other fruit is a good way to satisfy that craving without causing a spike in blood sugar. Please note that this does NOT include High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). HFCS delivers something of an overdose of fructose and has its own health risks. In my opinion, HFCS should be avoided entirely. When we talk about fructose, we mean the fructose that comes from whole fruits, or fruit juices that have no added sugar.

Where do we go from here? Well, what I've written here is just a start. It's a little bit of history, a little bit of science, and a little bit of practical dietary information. But it's just the beginning. To really know what this means for you, you need to continue this education for yourself.

Further useful reading:
http://www.cavemanketo.com
http://www.eatingacademy.com
http://www.dietdoctor.com/lchf




Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. Please do not take anything I've written here as absolute or infallible. This is what I and many others do, but this may not be best, or even healthy for you. Please talk to your doctor before you make any significant dietary changes.