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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