The Food Pyramid is supposedly designed to get us all eating the 'right' diet -- a diet high in carbohydrates (the proportions of the colored lines are supposed to represent the proportion of each item as a percentage of your caloric intake), low in fat -- notice that 'meats' no longer contains fats; they've been bumped into the same category as candy -- and with a good variety of fruits and vegetables.
This may surprise you, but the Healthy Eating Pyramid is seriously flawed. How flawed? Learn more.. It's the result of some oft-debunked ‘research’ done in the World War II era that managed to convince everyone that fat -- specifically, saturated fat -- was the cause of heart disease. The man that promoted this flawed research (name: Ancel Keys) was called out by the USDA in 1953: they told everyone that his research was flawed. Four years later, he joined the USDA, and he went back and changed their conclusions about his work.
How many of us would love the chance to do that? If I could go back and "correct" all of the things anyone has ever said about me, I'd be scheduled for sainthood.
Point being, once he had erased all of the stains on his reputation, he set about making sure that his flawed research was the basis for the USDA's dietary recommendations for our entire country. Ever since he convinced the government to back him up -- ever since we, as a nation, switched to his diet -- our rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, and hypertension have skyrocketed. This is because simple body chemistry demonstrates facts that directly contravene the USDA's advice.
More on that later.
For now, let me tell you what the Pyramid should look like:
Before I go into the specifics, let me break down food for you. All food comes with some proportion of the following six elements:
· Water
· Carbohydrates
· Protein (including essential amino acids)
· Fat (including essential fatty acids)
· Vitamins
· Minerals
In addition, unprocessed food like whole fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and meat that hasn’t been irradiated comes with additional elements:
· Enzymes that help you digest the food you’re eating
· Stuff that fights bacteria, viruses, and the like
· Cofactors and other substances that help your body use vitamins and minerals
It’s important to know that the more processed a food is, the less likely it is to contain any of these (and, in fact, many forms of processing, like pasteurization and irradiation, also destroy vitamins.)
The more enzymes and cofactors your body gets with it’s food (I call this the “context” of the food, because it’s always found in food if you eat it as close to it’s natural context as possible), the more your body gets out of the food it eats. You can eat a ton of vitamins and not get any functionality out of them at all if you don’t have the right stuff to go with it. (This can be demonstrated by the fact that millions of Centrum and other mega- vitamins, so intact that you can still read the words etched in the side, have been pulled out of port-a-potties across the country.)
In short: The Healthy Eating Pyramid is a joke; it takes a certified nutritionist's expertise to get you on the right track.
2 comments:
G'day Michael. I hope you don't mind but I feel I must correct you on your table.
Unfortunately, in my opinion and a lot of other people, your food pyramid is wrong.
'Protein' does not need to be consumed - amino acids are converted to protein as and when the body needs it, digesting protein from meat (BIG no no), seeds, nuts, soy (bad!), etc is not an efficient way to gain 'protein'; seeds and nuts are only good for providing the body with fat and minerals but the body can break down these more easily if they are raw or, better still, activated.
I'm curious to find out why you think dairy should be on the table? I hope you don't think that dairy provides calcium as this is a myth that was busted back in the 70's. In fact, dairy is one of the highest ranking food intolerances in humans on the planet and has been shown to be the leading cause of osteoporosis on many occasions.
a raw diet, consisting of 80+% of fruit and vegetables (carbs), less than 10% should be fat and less than 10% 'protein' in the form of nuts & seeds is best.
I'm interested to find out what 'starch' encompasses.
I'd be interested to hear your opinion on this.
Cheers,
Ben.
You should read The China Study by T. Collin Campbell, you can probably check it out from your local library. It goes along with what you're saying and more! I think you'll like it!
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