Health-Bent

The Food Pyramid is Dead

—

by

brandon keatley
in

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/business/03plate.html

That’s right…deceased. It has died at the young age of 19 years. Cause of death…ruled: overcomplication. Seems that the problem with our governments’ dietary recommendations are that we “the people” couldn’t understand them. All along I thought the problem was that the recommendations were just wrong…turns out it’s that we are too dull to comprehend a pyramid graph with words and pictures. Now that it’s been simplified for us…I suppose we will see the end of obesity and the diseases of civilization.

You could believe this…OR…you could believe that doing the same thing (in a different graphical representation) would yield the same crappy health. Einstein defined insanity as repeating the same process and expecting different results.

If you’re reading this…chances are I know how you feel.

If you think an autopsy of the Food Pyramid’s death needs to be conducted…and that maybe it actually died of heart disease…check out the Health-Bent umbrella if you haven’t already. Pass it on.

Comments

15 responses to “The Food Pyramid is Dead”

  1. Tiana MacLeod

    Oh how sad, wonder if they’ll ever get it right.. probably won’t live to see it..

    Reply
  2. FoodRenegade

    So true! When I read your post title, I immediately thought of the song from the Wizard of Oz — “Ding dong! The witch is dead. The wicked witch is dead!”

    Reply
  3. Paul Cleary

    Link is broken for the Umbrella, missing the : after http 🙂

    Reply
  4. brandon keatley

    should be fixed, thanks.

    Reply
  5. Jill

    yeah the link is broken for the umbrella…but I typed it in google and went straight to it 🙂 so putting it on a plate makes it better then…ok, seriously…the dept of agriculture needs to back off. and I’m surprised grains doesn’t take up more of the plate….like really surprised!

    Reply
  6. brandon keatley

    has anyone noticed that 2 million dollars has been spent on this plate diagram???!!!

    meg and i created the umbrella for about 14 cents (estimated). i would have sold it to them for only half a million or so… sorry taxpayers.

    Reply
  7. James Schipper

    I was wondering how much simpler it would be. So basically the pyramid, but a plate. And fewer words. Glad they cleared that up for us dumb consumers.

    Reply
  8. Abby

    “…grains and dairy also are important sources of protein and most Americans get far more protein than they need.”

    ummmmm

    Reply
  9. brandon keatley

    abby…i went to your blog and saw that you have close ties to Tom Naughton. pretty cool that you know FatHead himself, he’s one of our foodlebrities. i felt like i was channeling him when i wrote this…he will post about it i am sure and it’s guaranteed to be very entertaining.

    you think he’s ever seen our umbrella? wink. wink.

    Reply
  10. Shamra

    Considering how long the pyramid was limping along, I’m surprised it didn’t go down sooner! I say it’s about time. However, the plate doesn’t seem like much of an improvement in the health department. Just a couple more decades and maybe we’ll see the government rolling out with something a little more like the umbrella. We can only hope 🙂

    Reply
  11. ChrisB

    I think the USDA did better, not the best, but better. I teach nutrition seminars from time to time for active duty military and I criticize the USDA a lot but I will cut them some slack here. I would argue that though not perfect, the plate has been influenced by real science and by people like you and I that have been pushing a better way for many years. Given the current health state of most Americans, following this recommendation could really reduce the instances of type II diabetes and heart disease. I compare it to those of us who are CrossFitters and think our methodology is the best. Maybe it is but the person who finds a place somewhere between CrossFit and sitting in a chair all day will be doing something rather than nothing. What is sad is the price tag, as Brandon smartly pointed out. Just move your veggies over to the grain section and replace the milk with water and it’s pretty darn close to what we all think is best.

    Reply
  12. Tracy S

    Grains, dairy, and no fat at all. *sigh*

    Reply
  13. Dana

    There’s too much fruit, there’s no fat, and you know what? It’d be nice if they’d start pushing organ meats again. I don’t like them, but that’s me being finicky and subject to cultural conditioning. It’s not the veggies we are missing from our diets. Veggies have their place–mostly as a condiment–but mostly they are just a poor substitute for the nutrients we would be getting if we’d never dropped liver and kidney from our diet.

    There are athletic people out there getting fatty liver and type 2 diabetes. I’m tired of the mythology going around that if everybody would eat muscle meat, salads, and drink water and do tons of hard exercise three or more times a week, they’d never get sick–that’s not at all true. Don’t give your body what it needs and it won’t matter what else you do, you can’t make something out of nothing and you can’t make a healthy body if it isn’t getting the nutrients it *requires.*

    Example: vitamin K2. I did some reading up about what this does. Menatetrenone specifically, the mk-4 analog, is known to encourage osteocalcin production in the bones and teeth. Presto, stronger bones and teeth. Also, osteocalcin is metabolically active. It triggers your fat cells to produce something called adiponectin, which makes cells all over your body more sensitive to insulin. Type 2 diabetes is a disease of insulin resistance. And every kind of food that would have large amounts of menatetrenone in it is considered suspect at best and strongly discouraged from the diet at worst. Even the cheese that Americans seem to pile on top of everything tends to be part-skim or skim; it’s the *fatty* cheese that is a good source of this vitamin. And fish eggs. And organ meats. You see where this is going.

    Then there’s the choline that’s also in organ meats, especially liver. Also in egg yolks. Two more foods discouraged from the diet.

    I’m sure you’ve heard people say health is 80 percent what you eat. I’d say it’s 90 percent what you eat and the other 10 percent is genes, and I don’t mean genes for obesity or type 2 diabetes but rather, genes for cystic fibrosis or some chromosome out of place like in Down’s syndrome or what have you. We’ve pretty much come to the consensus that someone with a condition like that will never be completely “healthy.” But that’s the only part the food doesn’t control–what you eat even has an effect on whether you want to exercise!

    Reply
  14. Thursday July 20th, 2011 | 1884 CrossFit

    […] The Food Pyramid is Dead […]

    Reply
  15. Andrea Teissedre

    There are better alternatives: the new Healthy Eating Plate and the Healthy Eating Pyramid, both built by faculty members in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, in conjunction with colleagues at Harvard Health Publications. The Healthy Eating Plate fixes the flaws in USDA’s MyPlate, just as the Healthy Eating Pyramid rectifies the mistakes of the USDA’s food pyramids. Both the Healthy Eating Plate and the Healthy Eating Pyramid are based on the latest science about how our food, drink, and activity choices affect our health—and are unaffected by businesses and organizations with a stake in their messages.^:`;

    Please do view this useful web portal http://healthfitnessbook.comdi

    Reply

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