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I'm 42 and this is what the USDA has been saying all along with their food pyramids and four food groups and what have you. I think as a whole, nutritionists ha
by gibbitz 10y ago
I'm 42 and this is what the USDA has been saying all along with their food pyramids and four food groups and what have you. I think as a whole, nutritionists have always been on the same page, but those selling diets keep changing their opinions. Sure, there has been flip-flopping recently on fats and sugars, but the edict "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants" doesn't concern itself with those. I can't recall anyone ever promoting a diet with less vegetables (even the Atkins fad diet known for it's meat and dairy included vegetables) and make sure to overeat at every meal and I highly doubt either of those will ever be considered a good idea (provided the vegetables aren't tainted by radiation or chemicals or the diet's authors aren't overly politicizing GMO or some other arbitrary thing about production). Fad diets are all about selling supplements and books and are indeed snake oil. The problem is separating the wheat from the chaff and that's what this article is really about.
- wyager 10y ago> I'm 42 and this is what the USDA has been saying all along with their food pyramids and four food groups and what have you. You are not remembering correctly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_USDA_nutrition_guides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_USDA_nutrition_guid... > I think as a whole, nutritionists have always been on the same page, No, they certainly haven't. "Best practices" change all the time. This happened quite recently; http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/06/15/2015-dietary-guidelines.aspx http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/06/1... > but the edict "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants" doesn't concern itself with those It also contradicts the recently popularized "keto" diet, which has roughly as much evidence behind it as any other popular dietary recommendation (i.e. not much). Really the only things we can say authoritatively is "if you miss out on certain nutrients, you get sick". Beyond that, we're not really very sure. > The problem is separating the wheat from the chaff Your mistake is in thinking that there's a definitive difference. Almost ever piece of nutritional research available today has an extremely low predictive power. Where you draw the wheat/chaff line is more or less arbitrary. Even what should, ideally, be the most staunchly scientific food-related organizations, the FDA and FNS, change the recommendations all the time because they're not actually using hard science.
- mistermann 10y ago> It also contradicts the recently popularized "keto" diet, which has roughly as much evidence behind it as any other popular dietary recommendation (i.e. not much). Keto recommends avoiding plants? I suppose you're right about fruit, but those are disallowed because of the sugar content, not because they're plant based. EDIT: I suppose while I'm at it I should take exception with the notion "if there is no evidence, then therefore it is wrong" line of thought. Which you may note you didn't say explicitly, so then I would ask well what did you really mean. :)
- didibus 10y agoSorry, but what is hard science? I mean, models are suppose to change over time, at least if you're doing science right. Even physics models keep changing. I'm not sure we can say that at any point in time the FDA recommendations were bad, but simply that as more and more knowledge is acquired, old models are showed not to fit the data as well, so we come up with new models that do.
- closeparen 10y agoI'm half your age and the USDA recommended grains as the plurality of your diet until nutrition stopped showing up in school.