“Now officially retired, the USDA food pyramid endures as part of the national consciousness, representing more than just a set of government-approved food guidelines, but the culmination of big business, shady politics, and slippery science.” – Death By Food Pyramid
“Entertaining” guru and occasional insider-trader, Martha Stewart, has declared herself a fan of plant-based diets and taken a new job as chief shill for Beyond Meats, a fake meat/plant-based alternative to the real thing. But beware, not all sausage is made the same. An ad from the Center for Consumer Freedom shows that while real sausage is made with only four ingredients: pork, water, salt, and spices, some fake plant-based sausage comes with a long list of chemicals (over 40) and is highly processed. And since you will find a similar amount of sodium and fat in both, plant-based alternatives are not always the clean food they claim to be.
This isn’t the first time we’ve been warned about the dangers of animal fats. In 1911, Crisco made its debut, manufactured entirely from vegetable oil (cottonseed) extracted from plants. It was the first product to include polyunsaturated fats into the American diet with claims it was purer and healthier than its rival, lard. Nearly 100 years later, the results are finally in and animal fat may not be the death knell we’ve been led to believe. Partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, like Crisco, has been linked to higher risks of diabetes and obesity. The rush to eliminate saturated fats also gave us the next big failure: the low-fat diet.
In 1961, University of Minnesota physiologist, Ancel Keys, and the American Heart Association (AHA) declared that saturated fats were causing heart disease by raising blood cholesterol. Keys, who developed the diet-heart hypothesis, banished fats like lard, tallow, and suet in favor of a Mediterranean diet of grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, and nuts. The National Institute of Health (NIH) and the AHA also advanced the diet-heart hypothesis and recommended that we replace fat with refined carbohydrates. The AHA’s Heart Healthy Check Mark was launched in 1995 and was aggressively used to promote foods that met their diet requirements.
The federal government has been meddling in food and nutrition for decades, most notably through the USDA food pyramid dietary guidelines. Their recommendations for a low-fat grain-based diet were heavy on wheat, rice, corn, vegetables, and fruit while light on meat and dairy. The effects of the food pyramid impacted everything from the school lunch programs, food stamps, daycare snacks, WIC, and hospital meals, contributing to obesity and a myriad of chronic diseases ever since.
One critic of the diet-heart hypothesis was British nutritionist John Yudkin whose own studies focused on carbohydrates and sugar, body mass, and obesity, something Ancel Keys ignored. Carbs are the sugar, starches, and fibers found in fruits, grains, vegetables, cereals, flour, sugar, pasta, and bread. Yet while Yudkin and others would advance sugar as the major culprit for heart disease, the low-fat diet continued to dominate nutritionist’s recommendations.
In Denise Minger’s 2013 book, “Death by Food Pyramid”, Minger reveals her own experience with a diet of low-fat raw veganism that left her with a mouthful of decay and other health problems. Minger looks at how the trifecta of science, politics, and special interest led the unsuspecting public down the road to poor food choices and worse health. Minger also presents a comprehensive analysis of several nutritional studies and their often-flawed results that assumed a correlation for causation while ignoring the lifestyles unique to certain clinical trial participants.
Conclusions in Minger’s book suggest that diets high in fat improved some nation’s overall health and saw longer-life statistics than those eating plant-based diets. Particular cuts of meat are found to provide necessary nutrients not produced by plants. And while meats don’t directly cause obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, the manner in which it is prepared may have adverse health effects. Further studies suggest that a diet of whole-fat dairy, eggs, and meat, along with whole unprocessed foods, fared the best.
There is an escalating choir of voices calling for the reduction or elimination of omnivore diets in favor of meatless alternatives. Plant-based diets including vegetarianism, pescatarian, and veganism are offered as the desired options, with meat-eaters increasingly villainized. Yet, despite a century of bad diet recommendations, the obesity rates in the US have now passed 40 percent with diabetes, heart disease, and cancer the leading causes of death. To take a phrase from the global warming skeptics, the science is not settled. Keep that in mind, the next time you reach for a chemical substitute.
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