by THOMAS on Jan 14, 2014
While a very large segment of our population continues to struggle with weight gain and poor health, trying to force their bodies to be well on a dietary pattern never proven to have any health benefits, the latest USDA recommendations bring us more of the same. The six to eleven servings of grains per day in the forms of bread, cereals, rice, pastas that the USDA food pyramid recommends, while good for the grain growers, is actually promoting illness: diabetes, insulin resistance, obesity, and heart disease. The frustrating part of all of this is that these recommendations have never been tested. The USDA actually makes this statement in the 2010 Dietary Guidelines document. Folks who have consistently tried to follow the USDA guidelines, namely low-fat, grain and cereal based diet, ended up being overweight, hungry most of the time, and miserable. On the other hand, folks who switched to a diet NOT recommended by the USDA that included foods like broccoli with butter, greens with bacon, and the occasional steak, felt better, lost weight, and got healthier. Even those with type two diabetes have benefited significantly by abandoning the diets recommended by the American Diabetes Association and instead adopting a similar diet.
From the very beginning, U.S. dietary recommendations have had little or no basis in fact and have instead been based largely on politics and faith. The low-fat, no-fat, and high carbohydrate diets have been based on an unproven theory that they would reduce heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Instead we have seen a steady increase in the incidence of these disease processes since the adoption of these very guidelines. It appears that the USDA is not so much interested in the overall health of the U.S. population as much as it is in promoting the health of the U.S. agriculture industry. Grain based processed foods are every where in our society and more available to consumers than healthy alternatives. The worst part of it all is that these processed foods are actually capable of changing the expression of our genetic material, which will have far reaching implications for the health of future generations. (see my article posted on Epigenetics)
The signs and symptoms are everywhere and indicate that the existing U.S. dietary guidelines are flawed, outdated, and need to be replaced by new objective evidence based research. Much of this has already been done by independent laboratories and nutritional associations and if you combine this with the anecdotal experiences of millions of healthy folks, the critical need for a change in policy is undeniable.