4 ms·
> There is a lot of speculation that we will soon see a new food pyramid that is inverted. Pretty much everyone I know understands that the food pyramid is the
by alphazard 9mo ago
> There is a lot of speculation that we will soon see a new food pyramid that is inverted.
Pretty much everyone I know understands that the food pyramid is the product of various lobbies coming together and does not represent a legitimate theory of diet or nutrition.
That is independent of their politics or opinions about RFK.
I don't think a change to the food pyramid would change anyone's actions, people haven't taken it seriously for decades.
- julkali 9mo agoSource?
- mullingitover 9mo agoThe food pyramid went away over twenty years ago. It was discontinued in 2005, and the current guidelines are at https://www.fns.usda.gov/cnpp/myplate https://www.fns.usda.gov/cnpp/myplate which launched in 2011.
- DetectDefect 9mo agoWhich are crafted by individuals with strong financial ties to the meat, dairy, or egg industries, thus should be disregarded by any reasonable person.
- giantg2 9mo agoThen I would think the meat, dairy, and egg industry didn't get their money's worth. The My Plate guidelines have protein as less than 25% of the plate, and nothing says it has to be animal based.
- DetectDefect 9mo agoThe Court has actually ruled that the USDA violated federal law by hiding conflicts of interest in the Dietary Guidelines. It is beyond insane that these are the official guidelines on what Americans should eat. Why would anyone defend them?
- giantg2 9mo agoWhat do you find disagreeable about the My Plate that was linked?
- DetectDefect 9mo agoI just told you: it's made by food industry interests and is ultimately divorced from actual nutrition science.
- giantg2 9mo agoAnd I'm asking what would be different if you had to make a basic graphic based on nutritional science vs the My Plate graphic.
- mapotofu 9mo agoI wouldn’t reduce food to some stupid equational graphic. Instead I would work to try to regain trust by cracking the whip on these companies for once, whether it’s their prices, the quality of their products, their advertising, or all of the above. Our diets deserve more respect and that’s the reason RFK has an audience. He’s speaking to people who believe that. There can be better leaders than him, but at least he’s doing something!
- flatline 9mo agoDairy is completely unnecessary, for one. Its prominence on the plate makes everything else immediately suspect. There are probably some axes along which a glass of milk or cup of (unsweetened) yogurt is one reasonable option but that's not what is being promoted here.
- giantg2 9mo agoI see it as more of a limit than a requirement. After all, you can technically satisfy your dietary needs with vegetables and eliminate fruits. But we aren't talking about technicalities and edge cases, rather what a balanced diet might consist of. For many people that does include dairy and fruits, even if neither are completely necessary.
- stevenwoo 9mo agoYes, but I have distinct memories of these nutrition facts being taught to us in school for years, and our teachers asking us to report back how well we conformed to this supposed ideal diet as homework prior to any possible expectation that we children could be informed consumers.
- panja 9mo agoGoing through that link, it's hard to see where you came to that conclusion? It seems to have pretty reasonable dietary advice.
- DetectDefect 9mo ago[flagged]
- miltonlost 9mo ago> tells people to eat the food of another mammal's baby. This is the opposite of "reasonable" - it is actual government propaganda to support lobbied industry. Oh, I was wondering where the part of your screed was gonna come out as crazy. Human consumption of dairy is thousands of years old.
- wgjordan 9mo agoPlease follow the HN guidelines [1]: When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- DetectDefect 9mo agoMany (most?) human behaviors are thousands of years old, it does not make them reasonable. Also, refrain from hurling insults; just do not respond if you cannot materially substantiate your argument.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- Mountain_Skies 9mo agoThe food pyramid also seemed like pretty reasonable dietary advice until it wasn't. The skepticism expressed by other posters about where the guidelines originated from is well founded.
- resoluteteeth 9mo ago> Which are crafted by individuals with strong financial ties to the meat, dairy, or egg industries, thus should be disregarded by any reasonable person. The RFK jr version of the food pyramid now moves meat and dairy to the biggest section of the pyramid
- CrimsonRain 9mo ago[flagged]
- ecshafer 9mo agoEven the myplate doesn't seem right. There's probably too much fruit and too much dairy. There isn't any indication of legumes. Vegetables is too vague. There is no indication of fats, which are part of everything else.
- nsxwolf 9mo agoI just see one lobby, "Big Macronutrient". We all need to eat. I'll be worried when some company tries to make me eat actual plastic. We know far less about any of this than we pretend to.
- js2 9mo ago> eat actual plastic. Foreseeing such Crimes of the Future, David Cronenberg has already made that one into a movie.
- lithocarpus 9mo agoI mean I've seen "low calorie bread" that was basically industrial bread cut with cellulose which is analogous to very fine sawdust.
- aziaziazi 9mo agoCellulose is one of the main constituant of plants and as a fiber, great for your gut: > In human nutrition, cellulose is a non-digestible constituent of insoluble dietary fiber, acting as a hydrophilic bulking agent for feces and potentially aiding in defecation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose Workshop sawdust would be a bad idea though.
- lithocarpus 9mo agoI'm dubious about the idea that the cellulose additive is no different than eating plants. The forms that are used in food are refined / modified, i.e. not the same thing that I eat when I eat plants. I know a few people who react very badly to this added cellulose but don't have issues eating plants.
- SoftTalker 9mo agoBut prior to that it was pushed very hard in elementary schools. I remember performing in a school play that was all about the food pyramid and nutrition, in lockstep with the government propaganda at the time.
- _heimdall 9mo agoDon't public school lunches have to follow the food guide recommendations? Assuming that hasn't changed since I was in school, a recommendation based on something other than industry lobbying could help quite a bit with children's health and long term outlooks. That said, I obviously don't know what this administration would propose as a new recommendation so I'm not implying it will be better. We'd have to see what they put out, if anything, to get an idea about that.
- lostphilosopher 9mo agoFood pyramid was taught when I was in school, but that was before 2011 (as mentioned by another commenter) my own children are in school now and their school lunches align with more modern ideas (veggies and proteins). Certainly could still be improved but I recognize the cost, scale, delivery constraints, plus allergy considerations makes this non-trivial.
- _heimdall 9mo agoSame, I was just assuming the MyPlate recommendations were similarly expected for public schools to follow.
- Mountain_Skies 9mo agoWhen people say that SNAP (food stamps) should "only be able to buy healthy foods", they have to be reminded what the government considers to be healthy and just importantly, what the government considers to be unhealthy. Since SNAP is a government program, it almost certainly would use government guidelines on what is healthy.
- _heimdall 9mo agoI often hear that argument raised in response to the idea of SNAP covering things like sugary drinks and foods. I'm not sure how SNAP could follow guidelines and also pay for sugary drinks or candy (if those claims are accurate).
- giantg2 9mo ago"Pretty much everyone I know understands that the food pyramid is the product of various lobbies" Maybe adults, but probably not the people who were taught the food pyramid - children. Edit: changed the tense to acknowledge this was in the past. Thought that was obvious since the food pyramid was a thing of the past.
- napkinartist 9mo agoWho is being taught the food pyramid? Its been 20 years since it was discontinued. I don't know any children being taught it.
- shermantanktop 9mo agoI've seen this over and over - adults assuming that what happens in schools today is the same their childhood experience in the classroom, frozen in time. Parents of school-age children ranting and raving about how the school needs to stop doing X, when it hasn't been that way forever; and they cannot hear it, cannot absorb it, cannot stop talking about it. Something something childhood trauma.
- NiloCK 9mo agoNit: Children haven't been taught the food pyramid in something like a couple of decades I think. Current model is something like the DailyPlate visual - a plate filled proportionally with various things.
- alphazard 9mo agoDefinitely agree with the concern here, but this is not a problem unique to the food pyramid. Children will be taught all kinds of propaganda if they attend a public school. It's part of the cost, just not the part that is taken from tax dollars.
- smileysteve 9mo agoAnecdotally, only the "health focused" people around me understand that the food pyramid was for a different time and based on other interests. And I don't think adults on a grand scale question it, or process nutrition labels. Boomers in particular (who engrained Gen x and millennial diets) are most likely to follow grains (and margarine) diets.
- harrall 9mo agoI think the real problem is that a food pyramid is an oversimplification. No matter what you do, “fruits” isn’t really a goal — it’s macronutrients and micronutrients like vitamins, fiber, etc. So with or without lobbying, any food pyramid will always be wrong. A food pyramid exists because it is far more relatable than comparing nutrient labels and tabulating.
- GuB-42 9mo agoI consider the traditional food pyramid, with grain at the base, to make a lot of economic sense. The question is not "what's best for you", but "how to keep as many people as possible well fed and reasonably healthy". And an important part of it is that everyone gets enough calories, even the poor, and even during hard times. Grain is an efficient source of calories, and grain products tend to have a good shelf life and don't need refrigeration. And ideal baseline for keeping people from starving. But grain is good for calories, but not enough to keep people healthy, you also need vitamins, fiber, etc... So you introduce the second food group: fruits and vegetables. A bit more expensive and more involved than grain, but it provides most of the things grain don't. Now, we are at a vegan diet, and experience has shown that it can be perfectly healthy, but in order for it to be, you need to do a significant amount of bookkeeping, and you may need some slightly exotic food to avoid deficiencies. So, not enough for the general population, so you introduce animal products. Even more expensive, but now you have everything you need, with good margins. The top of the pyramid is for the products for which the needs are covered more efficiently by the lower layers.
- aziaziazi 9mo ago> a significant amount of bookkeeping [...] for the general population True, but not really more or less than a diet including animal products: in both cases they'll be good by varying the sources of macronutrients. In fact most long-term, healthy vegans don't bother bookkeeping what they eat. Some athletes and weight-loss seeker does but it's not particular to plant-based diet. Vegan bookeeping is a common fallacy. A while ago I had an odd conversation with a doctor that went like that: - It's complicated, you'll need to count everything ! - Is it different with animal products ? - Oh yes no count I advise 1-2 serve of red meat every 2 weeks, 2-4 serve of fish per week, 1 serve of seafood once in a while 2 serves of chicken per week, adjusted if you workout. Also 2 diary product per day but avoid salty cheeses too often or in large quantity. - I count 1 pill of b12 per day.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]