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.