R.D. (Registered Dietitian) in training here... In this diary, I will show how the USDA conspired with food manufactures to boost their sales while totally disregarding your health. I will offer a legitimate (yet controversial) Food Pyramid untainted by food industry lobbyists. Two of the food groups that likely comprise the bulk of your family's diet are missing. Follow me to find out the two groups America needs to erase from the menu.
UPDATE
The image of the Paleo Pyramid is now embedded in the body of this diary.
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When the USDA chose the "Basic Four Food Groups" in the 1950's, they invited executives from major food companies to help.
The dutiful "regulators" reasoned:
"(The USDA) felt that food industry groups would have a vital interest in any food guide sponsored by the Government."
As it turns out, the milk industry loved having its very own food group while the wheat and grain companies felt equally anxious to slide their products onto breakfast and dinner tables across America in the form of cereal, bread and pasta.
That decade saw "Tony the Tiger" lunge into kitchens through black and white TV screens, roaring about his Grrrrrreeat Kellogg's Frosted Flakes. Ok, so you don't feel the least bit alarmed by devastatingly handsome, charismatic cartoon Tigers?
Understandable.
But food manufacturers rejoiced over his instant success and what they did after that still damages our health today. Along with Kellogg's, the portfolios of General Mills and Post swelled with stacks of cash as they brought popular brands to market.
As is often the case when Big Business teams up with Big Government, the people get sold out Big Time. To this day, the food industry sees dollar signs whenever the USDA prepares to spoon feed a nutrition plan to the masses, promising health on the surface while grabbing huge profits in spite of any potentially harmful consequences for our country.
In 1992, America got the Food Pyramid That Made Us Fat.
Luise Light, the architect of the original version was a nutritional expert who made her recommendations based on valid food science in the 1980's. But certain members of the food lobby rejected her prescription for small servings of their products so they strong armed the USDA, urging them to bury her work. By 1992, they returned her Food Pyramid to her unrecognizable.
(In her words)
When our version of the Food Guide came back to us revised, we were shocked to find that it was vastly different from the one we had developed. As I later discovered, the wholesale changes made to the guide by the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture were calculated to win the acceptance of the food industry.
With $15 billion dollars in farm subsidies at stake annually, it's no small wonder why insiders at the USDA twisted her Food Pyramid and flipped it upside down before unveiling it to the public and passing it off as healthy nutrition despite her contentions.
Our recommendation of 3-4 daily servings of whole-grain breads and cereals was changed to a whopping 6-11 servings forming the base of the Food Pyramid as a concession to the processed wheat and corn industries. Moreover, my nutritionist group had 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, recommending that they be eaten sparingly. To our alarm, in the “revised” Food Guide, they were now made part of the Pyramid’s base.
Over 20 years ago, Luise Wright predicted what was to become the USDA Food Pyramid of 1992 would eventually lead to illness and obesity in the United States.
I vehemently protested that the changes, if followed, could lead to an epidemic of obesity and diabetes — and couldn’t be justified on either health or nutritional grounds
As it turns out, Ms. Wright, well, right.
Critics of the USDA and FDA have spoken.
In the 1980's not one state had an obesity rate over 20 percent. In 2010, ONLY one state has an obesity rate UNDER 20 percent. This is not a genetic problem--Mark Hyman M.D.
Sadly, there are few signs of reversal in our nutrition policy.
Whenever an honest, compelling case for a change threatens the status quo, studies pop up everywhere reminding us that there's no such thing as a once-size-fits-all diet. Potential health benefits be damned, their claims point to "inconclusive findings" or "insufficient evidence" and stress how we can't ever know something for sure as long as there is ongoing "debate" (read: stall tactics and outright lies).
Hypocritically, a standardized diet is exactly what the US Government has been promoting for the entire population for over half a century! And we have accepted it, to such an extent that we examine "Nutrition Facts Panels" (standardized by the USDA/FDA), thinking this strategy will give us some kind of healthy edge!
Unfortunately for us, we've been studying their textbooks and determining our health according to what food suppliers have defined as healthy.
Suppose there were a healthy diet that could benefit every citizen of this country, one that respected scientists and health experts believe should replace the USDA Food Pyramid?
What should we do?
Should we wait decades for 100% conclusive evidence like we did during the scientific "debate" over global warming? Ask yourself, how many more pharmaceutical drugs with merely 95% safety rates will reach the market after merely two months of trial and kill a person in that time span?
Furthermore, why do we always have to wait decades before we're proven right when they only have to wait two months before being proven wrong.
It's tough to know who to listen to when experts like Luis Wright have been attacked, muzzled and marginalized by gangs of clever food executive spin masters.
They have already pointed their AK47's at Dr. Loren Cordain, a scientist whose work threatens the very existence of two of the food groups.
He is calling for a return to the distant past, a Paleo Diet aka "Caveman's Diet".
Dr. Cordain theorizes that the strength, stamina and endurance of prehistoric peoples was a result of heavy consumption of wild plants, herbs, berries, nuts, fish, seafood and wild game. Our ancestors needed to be strong in order to escape predators. He claims their natural food sources made them fast and strong and gave them the stamina they needed to hunt and survive harsh climates.
Dr. Cordain's aim is to try to replicate as closely as possible the original human diet, a one-size-fits-all solution every human being in the planet thrived on.
The Paleo Pyramid looks like this:
Did you notice the 2 missing food groups?
Can you imagine the losses for those industries and how they must be scrambling to wage war on this new science?
I am happy. As a future R.D., I have hope. The work of Loren Cordain is remarkable and it just makes sense. Nature did not intend for us to fill our bodies with modified foods. The shit's hitting the fan. Just look at the rise in the rates of chronic diseases, from Diabetes and Obesity to ADD, ADHD, Autism, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and cancer.
I strongly recommend you question your Government and take your health into your own hands.
Give it a try.
The Paleo Pyramid is so easy, even a caveman can use it.
