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Salads carry a huge profit margin at restaurants. Everyone loves to eat healthy or at least believe that they're doing so. A salad is a great healthy choice (u
by NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
Salads carry a huge profit margin at restaurants.
Everyone loves to eat healthy or at least believe that they're doing so. A salad is a great healthy choice (until you slather it with dressing, which is nutritionally awful stuff.)
But a house salad is composed of the cheapest ingredients ever: you've got tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, shredded carrots, cucumbers, a little shredded cheese and croutons. But you can charge at least $7.99 for something that simple. And you can offer a protein to go on top for extra profit.
And truthfully there's very little nutrition of any kind in that ingredients list. When you've grown your lettuce in impoverished soil, and your tomatoes are picked green and "ripen on the vine" or artificially induced, there's not much they can offer. Someone once said to me, "How do you kill an iguana? Feed it nothing but iceberg lettuce."
Now don't get me wrong, salads are a great part of anyone's diet and we should never neglect salads, because they're certainly preferable to a burger and fries every day. But vegetables, being cheap to produce and profitably marked up, are hindering many a plan to stay healthy.
Developed countries do not build food plans based on the good nutrition of the populace, they're based on maximizing shareholder value for the agribusiness conglomerates, and subsidizing the most strategically important crops. We could eat corn until we are literally blue in the face.
As long as your corner convenience store is jammed with corn chips, beef jerky, and beer, Americans will never eat healthy, even if the Food Pyramid is rehabilitated. I have seen some good progress made on bringing fresh produce to food desert areas. I hope those initiatives succeed and continue.
- hombre_fatal 3y agoI don't understand talking about salads for 50% of your comment unless you think iceberg lettuce salads are the one alternative to meat or that you think restaurant vegetarian food is just salad rather than any combo of things like beans and grains. Also, https://www.myplate.gov https://www.myplate.gov is very reasonable. The problem with food guidelines aren't that they're wrong. It's that nobody adheres to them the same way they don't adhere to a guideline like "get daily exercise".
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoUSDA guidelines are designed to benefit those who produce processed food. My source here is 10 years old, so it does not have up-to-date information on whatever MyPlate is pushing. But it says: "[the pyramid] no longer gives any clear recommendations whatsoever. It is fairly open to artistic interpretation." Previous food pyramids were demonstrably "perverted", such as one where a major food group component consists of sugars and fats. Carbohydrates were the base of that pyramid. Luise Light, Ed.D., explained that "3-4 daily servings of whole grains were changed to 6-11 at the base" as a concession to the processed wheat and corn industries. The processed white-flour, low-nutrient products which she had placed at the peak, were moved to the base, encouraging a foundation of sugars, fats, and highly-processed sweets. The wording was changed from "eat less" to "avoid too much". The food industries and their allies in Congress were pissed because they said the USDA shouldn't be telling citizens to "eat less" of anything! Many health guides are written by pharmaceutical companies, and therefore everyone in hospitals here gets Jell-O. Cool stuff.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoDid the typical American work and lifestyle change? I could definitely see eating more carbs back when most people worked manual labor. > a major food group component consists of sugars and fats. How many servings of sugar and fat does it say? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/USDA_Food_Pyramid.gif https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/USDA_Foo... This one doesn't even give servings, it says to use sparingly.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoWell, see for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_(nutrition)#Criticism_and_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_(nutrition)#Criti... The Wikipedia copy derides and downplays some of the criticisms, but at least they admit that criticism exists.
- myshpa 3y agoSalads and corn? Your idea of what vegans eat is very much off. Vegans consume a variety of plant-based foods such as fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and plant-based alternatives. Most of the recipes you know and love can be modified to have a vegan version.