The Public Health Public Health crisis

If you are old enough, you probably remember 4-4-3-2 that was the public health indoctrination you received in elementary school for your daily food consumption. It was pretty easy to remember 4 servings of fruits & veggies, 4 bread, 3 dairy and 2 meat.

For some reason, the same people who told us we'd have to learn the metric system because the english system would be obsolete, came up with this food pyramid to the right.

The only thing I can tell you about this mess is that if you follow this, you'll be a 400 lb diabetic before you are 50 years old.

It's been my belief for a long time that this is a product of a bunch of politically correct liberals trying to dissuade people from meat consumption.

Now evidence is coming out that this diet may be harmful to your health....

Every five years, the federal Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services revise their Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a publication that sets the direction for federal nutrition-education programs. In an age when aggressive government agencies in places like New York City seek a greater hand in shaping Americans’ diets, the next set of guidelines, published later this year, could prove more controversial than usual because increasing scientific evidence suggests that some current federal recommendations have simply been wrong. Will a public-health establishment that has been slow to admit its mistakes over the years acknowledge the new research and shift direction? Or will it stubbornly stick to its obsolete guidelines?

The crux of the controversy is the quantity of fat and carbohydrates that we consume and how it influences our cardiac health. As a recent review of the latest research in Scientific American pointed out, ever since the first set of federal guidelines appeared in 1980, Americans heard that they had to reduce their intake of saturated fat by cutting back on meat and dairy products and replacing them with carbohydrates. Americans dutifully complied. Since then, obesity has increased sharply, and the progress that the country has made against heart disease has largely come from medical breakthroughs like statin drugs, which lower cholesterol, and more effective medications to control blood pressure.

Researchers have started asking hard questions about fat consumption and heart disease, and the answers are startling. In an analysis of the daily food intake of some 350,000 people published in the March issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers at the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute found no link between the amount of saturated fat that a person consumed and the risk of heart disease. One reason, the researchers speculate, is that saturated fat raises levels of so-called good, or HDL, cholesterol, which may offset an accompanying rise in general cholesterol. A few weeks later, researchers at Harvard released their own analysis of data from 20 studies around the world, concluding that those who eat four ounces of fresh (not processed) red meat every day face no increased risk of heart disease.

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I've always been amazed that regardless of the time in history every culture in humanity has come up with a way to make bread out of wheat, corn, rice, potatoes, etc.

Yet I've always wondered why? In my humble opinion, it's because bread represented cheap fuel for cultures with limited fresh food options. The difference is that average person probably burned 4,000 - 6,000 calories a day just subsisting in a primitive culture. In today's sit on your butt all day culture, consuming carbs from bread is liking loading up a Toyota with jet fuel. It just doesn't work.

But you'll never get the public health establishment to concede the politically correct line. Instead, you'll get requests for more money to clean up the obesity problem they helped create.

It's how government works.