New Food Plan
I just realized that I've neglected to suggest a plan for American eating that would be more beneficial than the Food Pyramid. I've spent most of my time complaining about what is wrong without clearly defining what should be changed. For my plan, I am going to do away with the Pyramid. It would be impossible for me to rank one food as more important than the other.
Without further a due, here is my plan:
- Eat lots of vegetables. It doesn't matter if they're cooked or raw, just eat them. The more variety of color the better.
- Eat some fruit. Fruits are delicious and packed with nutrients.
- Eat meat. Don't just eat white meat, don't just eat red meat. Remember, Saturated fat is healthy and provides vital energy for the body.
- Eat small amounts of nuts and seeds. Nuts and seeds are valuable sources of fat and protein. They are also very dense sources of nutrition.
- Anything else, eat in moderation. This includes bread, milk, and sugar. These foods should be limited. Too much of them will throw the body out of homeostasis.
How'd you like it? It is pretty vague isn't it? It's supposed to be vague though. Different people need different amounts of food. This plan gives everyone a rough outline to follow that is nutritionally sound without going overboard in either the low-carb or low-fat direction. Most anyone could follow these simple directions and see positive health results.
Another topic I'd like to bring up is school lunch. There are very few people that would not agree with me that school lunches are terribly unhealthy. I remember that my middle school offered square pizza, fries, and chicken sandwiches pretty much every day and maybe a salad covered with dressing if we were lucky. High School offered pretty much the same thing. Even the food pyramid would balk at the atrociousness of this lunch. In addition, it is horribly easy to influence kids. If a child grows up eating garbage, I have no doubt that they will most likely continue eating garbage. School lunches need to change so that kids know what a healthy lunch looks like, so that as they grow up, they gravitate towards healthier foods. If school lunches followed the plan I outlined above they would definitely cost more. The extra money should be thought of as an investment though. Not only will the kids be performing better in school but if they actually continue eating healthily, they will be less of a burden on the health care system as they age. I would also not be surprised if there was a link between attention disorders and malnutrition. I have read about it before but the research is still to recent for there to be a consensus in the scientific community.
Additional readings:
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Is the Department of Agriculture Evil?
I found out something new today. The Department of Agriculture spends the highest percentage of their budget on nutrition programs including the National School Lunch Program and the Food Stamps Program. At first glance I had blamed the poor quality of the Food Pyramid on lobbyists, however I have come to realize that this is not entirely true. The United States Department of Agriculture is not evil. After reading an interview by frontline, I believe that the department had good intentions but failed to implement a scientifically sound program that was healthy for Americans. The first food pyramid developed in 1991 was based off of already outdated science and the new My Pyramid is not much better. I have realized though that I needed to take into account that this organization is a political entity that has to deal with more factors than I can comprehend. They have to deal with lobbyists, politicians, scientists, environmentalists and many more -ists who are all trying to work their opinions into the final product. Because of this, the food pyramid is more like a compromise between all of these different entities. Unfortunately a compromise like this has caused Americans to model their diet off of a give-and-take symbol of Nutrition. This has also led me to believe that nutrition should be something settled between nutritionists and people. This would cut out the ridiculous amount of input contributed by companies like the Potato Board whose best interest is making potato farmers money.
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Great Blogs
All Quiet on the Western Blunt - A convincing blog that offers a great amount of information regarding the legalization of marijuana. I highly recommend this blog to people on both sides of the issue. I thought the author's style of writing was appropriate for the subject and enjoyed his weekly posts. More importantly I learned a lot about the subject and did not feel that the posts were hard to read.
Federal Government Relations with Native Americans - This is a topic I knew pretty much nothing about. While I don't agree with all of the posts, I do agree that its a good idea to address the needs of certain Native American populations. The blog brings to light some very interesting topics regarding Native Americans, ranging from government relations to history.
iGreen - I like reading about environmental issues and this blog certainly delivers. It offers a lot of good information about global warming and what needs to be done to fix it. I like the way that the author is able to relate it back to his own life.
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Cholesterol-Heart Hypothesis
The Cholesterol-Heart Hypothesis in a nut shell is the idea that when we eat saturated fats and cholesterol, the cholesterol enters our blood stream and attaches to the sides of our arteries and slowly giving us atherosclerosis and heart disease. Foods that are laden with cholesterol include red meats, eggs, cake, ice cream, and macaroni and cheese. This makes sense right? You eat heavy cholesterol laden foods and your blood serum levels go up.
A guy name Ansel Keyes in the 1960s and 1970s was able to convince a large portion of the United States that this was true. He did this by going from country to country and looking at their diets versus the frequency of heart disease. His reports show a direct correlation between heart disease and consumption of saturated fats. For a visual representation of his findings, please refer to the above video. Unfortunately to get the perfect graph that he boasted, he had to omit certain countries including the United Kingdom, Norway, and Holland that eat high amounts of saturated fat but somehow avoid the high levels of heart disease that countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia are plagued with. Whats a shame is that Ansel Keyes research has spurred the United States to shun saturated fat when in truth it should be embraced.
Saturated fat is not the devil. Here is a link that chronicles an exceptional amount of research from various institutions that completely destroys the cholesterol-heart hypothesis. My favorite was a study performed by the University of Connecticut over a 12 week time span. Overweight men and overweight women were placed on either a low carb or a low fat diet. In the end, those on a low carb diet lowered their total cholesterol and triglyceride levels more than those on the low fat diet. Many other studies have proven that the link between heart disease and cholesterol is bunk. Unfortunately, the United States still needs to catch up on their readings.
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Implications
Disease and rising health care costs are in America's future if the way we eat does not change. I have no doubt that the rate of heart disease, obesity, and diabetes will rise at an alarming rate if some action is not taken to inform Americans about the perils of the Standard American Diet. Some would say that Americans are already well informed but continue to eat unhealthily out of choice. This is simply not the case. Government tools like the Food Pyramid and My Pyramid have had a profound impact on the way Americans eat. Unfortunately they are currently working to make America unhealthy. If measures are taken to create a scientifically based nutritional plan for Americans it would do wonders for the general health of the country. High blood pressure, blood sugar levels, and cholesterol levels could be obliterated depending on our country's reception of the plan. Obesity in America places a nearly $117 dollar estimated burden on the public. Any modest reduction in obesity would help lessen this insane amount. Nutritionists have begun seeing increased rates of type 2 diabetes in children lately. Type 2 diabetes is also known as "adult-onset" diabetes and the main way to get it is through terrible nutrition; children should not be getting it. In the future this will be a horrible drain on the economy and the health care system. Also, the children will grow up and require life long treatment. If the lives of a handful of children were saved from this fate then my plan would be worth it.
America is fat and the blame cannot be placed solely on its overeating citizens. If the government does not increase funding for nutritional research, overhaul the Deparment of Agriculture's food pyramid, and fix school lunches, nutrition related conditions will continue to increase and continue to be a drain on the overall health of the nation and the health care system.
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Self Analysis
Its time for me to take a critical look at the progress made on my blog. I have to say that from the beginning of this project I have found myself against nearly all conventional nutritional wisdom. This might be because of the struggle with weight I had in middle school and high school. Several years back I was overweight and in about a year and a half I lost somewhere around 50 lbs. In my quest to lose weight I tried many different diets ranging from caloric restriction with incredibly low fat to eating 6 times a day with moderate intake of all nutrients. I can say from experience that restricting calories sucks. I craved food all of the time and my weight would shift dramatically throughout the week. Overall I lost weight, but my metabolism slowed down to a snail’s pace. This is the way the American Medical Association wants you to eat. No fat, tons of carbohydrates, and minimal protein. It is completely imbalanced. What I tried next was eating 6 times a day. The foods I ate were varied and I got a healthy amount of protein, fat, and carbs. My metabolism shot through the roof and at one point I felt as if I couldn’t stop losing weight no matter how much I ate. This experiment led me to the conclusion that maybe fat isn’t the devil. In high school I began reading all sorts of information about health and eating. Nothing substantial that I read came to the conclusion that people should be following the food pyramid; If anything, following the food pyramid would make people fat. The only documents that supported it were sketchy warnings that fad diets were dangerous and posed long term health problems. However, these documents never had any real evidence to prove their case (except against vegetarian, vegan, raw food, and fruititarian diets which have a substantial amount of evidence showing that they are unhealthy). I can definitely see how I could be a little biased in my approach to this subject. The food pyramid never worked to keep me healthy and I do not have any reason to believe that it works for anyone. However, I do not think that I have been unfair in any of my posts. If there is anything in my blog that doesn’t sit well with anyone please do not hesitate to ask questions.
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Theory
My theory based on the empirical evidence over the past 2 centuries presented by Gary Taubes and the basic theory of evolutionary diet is that people are currently taking a backwards approach to nutrition. Major fault lies in organizations like the Department of Agriculture and the American Medical Association for disseminating bad science like the cholesterol-heart hypothesis and the food pyramid as common knowledge and labeling Banting style diets as unhealthy fads. Through the spread of inaccurate assumptions, Americans have been lead to believe that people are obese because they eat too much, ignoring the human body's ability to regulate body fat that 10,000 years of evolution has developed. To solve the obesity epidemic, the American diet needs to change. As I will discuss in a later post, the evidence with which the current American diet is based off of is fundamentally wrong. If anything, the food pyramid is more similar to an unhealthy fad than the Banting diet. In order for America to see a decrease in obesity, first and foremost, accurate information needs to be spread. This includes preventative measures taken by doctors to ensure their patients know the implications of eating unhealthily and how to eat more sensibly. Second of all, since people acquire their eating habits as children, primary school lunches should not include anything unhealthy. Its obvious that given the choice, most little kids will eat chicken nuggets over a serving of vegetables and meat. Taking away the unhealthy option is the only way to teach kids how to eat responsibly. Lastly, The Department of Agriculture should remove its food pyramid. It is wrong for a non health organization whose sole purpose is to regulate the production and sale of food to tell Americans what they should be eating. Nutritional guidelines should be established by a more responsible organization whose revenue is not based off of citizen's consumption habits.
These three recommendations are hopefully a step in the right direction because they identify how to fix the problem and how to stop it at its source. If they were implemented they would help halt the obesity epidemic.
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History Part 2
This is where the research of one of my favorite nutritionists, Gary Taubes, comes into play. Gary Taubes wrote the book Good Calories, Bad Calories, which in my opinion is one of the best popular works that focuses on presenting the evidence for and against the recommended American diet. Its a compelling book that gave me the idea for this blog because a good section of the book is devoted to the development of nutrition from the mid 1800s onwards.
Because of the limited availability of processed carbohydrate snack foods there was not a health crisis in the 1800s like there is today, however there were still corpulent individuals. William Banting was one of them. Banting tried everything to lose weight including adequate exercise and cutting back on calories. Unfortunately this didn't help. He became stronger which increased his appetite and his reduced caloric intake left him exhausted. He even went as far as taking purgatives and diuretics but he kept gaining weight. William Harvey, an aural surgeon, recomended that "a purely animal diet, although widely diverse in its development; and that if a purely animal diet . . . with such vegetable diet as contained neither sugar nor starch, might serve to arrest the undue formation of fat." For Banting, this diet actually worked. He lost 50 pounds by 1664 and was quoted saying "I have not felt better in health than now for the last 26 years." If this diet sounds familiar, then you have most likely heard of the Atkins diet, Mediterranean diet, or any of the other diet promoting a small carbohydrate intake and large protein and fat intake.
Over time, Banting's diet gained popularity. Many medical textbooks recommended "Banting" for the treatment of obesity. Dr. Spock, the famous parental guide, promoted a diet without rich desserts and plain, starchy foods. "For over a century, this was common wisdom" wrote Gary Taubes. However, in 1973 the American Medical Association declared Banting style diets merely dangerous fads. A healthy diet had become a low fat diet because of the recently popularized diet-heart hypothesis. People began eating less meat, lard, whole milk, and butter but increased their consumption of margarine, vegetable shortening, and salad and cooking oils. This directly coincides with the heart-disease epidemic which was falsely blamed on saturated fats. The diet-heart hypothesis influenced people to blame it on cholesterol, the evil culprit of heart disease. Between 1960 and 1980, between 12 and 14 percent of the population were considered obese. After 1980 the rate of obesity increased to over 30 percent and in 2004 1 in 3 people were considered obese.
Now Americans have a major problem. Is it possible that the change in conventional wisdom regarding a healthy diet could be at the base of the problem? I will discuss this possibility in the next blog entry and introduce my theory to the table. For now I will leave it at this:
"In medicine, we are often confronted with poorly observed and indefinite facts which form actual obstacles to science, in that men always bring them up, saying: it is a fact, it must be accepted."
- Claude Bernard
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Links
Here are some links that I found especially useful when researching my topic.
http://www.beyondveg.com - This site provides a wealth of information about evolutionary diet which is important when considering optimal diet. It has some very compelling evidence and goes a long way in debunking the so called health benefits of vegetarian diets. I haven't come across an article on this website that is not supported by quality evidence.
http://dinakhader.blogs.com/ - This is a great blog about eating right and advances in nutrition research. There is a guide for college students on how to eat right and even a post about the gap in nutrition between Great Britain and the United States. I highly suggest reading this blog.
http://www.thincs.org/ - Cholesterol levels are the basis of the diet established by the Department of Agriculture. This site offers some insight into the cholesterol-heart disease myth established in the mid 1900s. It is important to know the science behind the food we eat. Understanding cholesterol.
http://health.howstuffworks.com/fat-cell2.htm - An unbiased source that details how the body stores fat and which hormones are responsible for it. I love hostuffworks.com and was happy to find an article that I could apply to my blog.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/gary-taubes-on-the-latest-diet-study/ - An article with an interview of my favorite nutritionist Gary Taubes. If you haven't heard of him yet, you will in my next couple of posts. He is a pretty amazing nutritionists, at least in my opinion. I have read his book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" and found the evidence presented in his book quite compelling.
Update: I added a little more detail to my descriptions.
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A Lesson in History: Part 1
To cultivate a better understanding of American Nutrition I am going start out by giving a brief history of our diet beginning in the 19th century. The early 1800s were a time of frontiersmen, merchants, and farmers. Industrialization had yet to occur on a large scale and fast food was a foreign term (1). On the frontier people only had access to indigenous plants and animals, however they stocked supplies including flour, beans, and sugar at regular intervals. They would eat on average three meals a day comprised of foods like corn bread, hot cakes, boiled eggs, sausage, stew and calves' head (2). Farmers and merchants had access to a greater variety of foods including larger quantities of fruits and vegetables and a significantly larger amount of animal products as compared to the frontiersmen. According to Alex Soyer's "Modern Housewife" a farmer or merchant's diet in the 1800s would consist of coffee, butter, eggs, meat, bread, soup, and cheese. The 1850s brought the California gold rush and a plethora of new recipes to America influenced by the Chinese, Spanish, and Mexican immigrants. Westerners dined at cheap eateries and ate similar to the farmers and merchants back east. The mid to late 1800s also are responsible for the advent of soft drinks and cereal. In 1865 C.W. Post developed his first cereal called Postum (3), Coca-Cola was invented by Dr. John S. Pemberton in 1886, and in 1898 Pepsi-Cola was invented by Caleb Bradham (4).
The 19th century diet was transitional. In the beginning foods were largely unprocessed. Soda Pop and Cereal were the first heavily processed goods introduced in America. In Part 2 of A Lesson in History I will continue the transition into the 20th and 21st century.
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American Nutritional Analysis
There is a general consensus among Americans that we as a nation are overweight. How to fix the problem is where opinions diverge among nutritionists. The United States Department of Agriculture suggests 2 cups of fruit, an ambiguous amount of vegetables, 3 cups of low fat milk, 3 ounces of grain, and a vague amount of lean meats along with regular exercise to maintain a healthy weight. This type of diet is high in carbohydrates and low in fat and is largely based on the cholesterol-heart disease myth. It is also happens to be the mainstream diet promoted by the United States Government. It is important to note that the United States Department of Agriculture is not a health organization. The United States Department of Agriculture ". . . aims to meeth the needs of farmers and ranchers, promote agricultural trade and production, work to assure food safety, protect natrual resources, foster rural communities and end hunger in the United States and abroad" (wikipedia). In other words, it is an organization looking out for the best interests of the food industry. The diet they have established works in the best interested of food manufacturers and harbors outdated nutritional information.
As the rate of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes increases in the United States, people still cling to the notion that this type of diet is actually healthy. In reality, a diet like the one prescribed by the Department of Agriculture will promote obesity. Any diet low in fat content will promote the storage of unwanted body fat. In addition, a diet high in carbohydrates will further promote the storage of fat by triggering key hormones in the body. Not to say that fast food and frozen dinners do not play their part in the obesity epidemic, but a critical look needs to be taken at the foundation of American health which is largely based off of the corrupt food pyramid.
In order for Americans to rectify their diet they need to take a look that takes into consideration both human evolution and recent findings in nutritional studies. A diet that includes a moderate intake of carbohydrates, protein, and fat from the correct sources will promote a lean, healthy body void of the disease of civilization such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Unfortunately since the mid 1900s diets that include any amount of fat have been scoffed at. By taking a look at how human beings have eaten for 99% of their existence and combining that with recent nutritional research, a clear diet can be established that would benefit Americans, drastically lowering the amount of disease related to excess weight.
Cholesterol information:
http://www.thincs.org/links.htm
The Food Pyramid:
http://www.rense.com/general12/wrong.htm
http://bekk.blogspot.com/2007/05/grains-bad-for-us-bad-for-planet.html
http://thewhimofamadman.com/blog/2008/12/why-you-cant-trust-the-food-pyramid/
http://www.rense.com/general26/truth.htm
http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/IntheNews/Etc/1093629527.html
Evolution and Nutrition:
http://www.beyondveg.com/cordain-l/grains-leg/grains-legumes-1a.shtml
http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/hb/hb-interview1a.shtml
American Nutrition needs an Overhaul:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/NewYearNewYou/story?id=3654291&page=1&page=1
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/12/60II/main628877.shtml
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/mark_bittman_on_what_s_wrong_with_what_we_eat.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/21/AR2006012100180.html
http://www.ted.com/speakers/ann_cooper.html
Obesity:
http://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/publications/facts/obesity/en/
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How do Americans Eat?
The average american consumes 3770 calories a day, nearly 1000 calories over the global average. In addition to our astounding caloric intake, Americans also take in 4500 mg of sodium a day and 142 pounds of sugar every year. this link provides a visual representation of how Americans are eating compared to the rest of the world. Looking at the pictures, healthy portions of vegetables can be seen at nearly all of the countries' tables. However, the Americans table is filled with Lays potato chips, pizza, and burger king. From this picture it is easy to see how one third of American children and between 20 percent and 30 percent of adult Americans are considered obese. It does not take a stretch of the imagination to realize that eating junk food can be detrimental to overall health. Obesity is associated with multiple diseases including type 2 diabetes, cancer, stroke, and osteoarthritis. As obesity rates continue to rise, so will the rates of these medical maladies. It is clear that our current eating trends cannot support a healthy population. Recognizing the problem is the first step to coming up with a solution. What comes next is identifying where the problem began.
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Human Diet
For the majority of humanity's time here on Earth, people have had an eclectic diet. Archaeological evidence as well as the eating patterns of modern day hunter gatherers and chimpanzees provide ample proof that people most likely ate anything they could digest including any land animals, fish, leaves, fruit, honey, mushrooms, birds, nuts, and seeds; in other words, anything they could get their hands on. In the last 12,000 years, people began drastically changing their eating habits by adding grains, soy beans, peanuts, and other foods that require processing into their diets. Not until recently have these foods become a staple of the American diet. The early 1900s brought about the large scale production of cereals, sweets, and breads that have become a large portion of the American diet. Further advances in food science and agriculture have made unhealthy foods such as peanuts, soybeans, and homogenized and pasteurized milk readily available. Because of this, the food industry has had a heavy hand in American government organizations that tell citizens how they should eat in order to stay healthy. For example, the food pyramid developed by the United States Department of Agriculture has followed American trends in food production and now suggests that the majority of calories consumed should come from grains and that the consumption of meat and fats should be kept to a bare minimum. This is contrary to human evolution and detrimental to human health which will be discussed in detail during a later post. To better understand why Americans eat like they do, the flaws in the way we eat, and what should be done, I will discuss in this blog how the American diet has changed over time and how the United States Department of Agriculture's "recommended" diet was developed and how it is adding to the dietary troubles we already face.
Update: Revised for Grammar
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About Me
I am a student at a major research university that, through this blog, will discuss the History of American Nutrition as well as major organizations effects on the American perception of a healthy diet. I hope that my writing will give people an idea of why we eat what we eat and the not always positive effects of groups like the American Medical Association.
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