2800: They Flipped the Food Pyramid! (Comparing the New vs. the Old Food Pyramid)

14:09Justin Andrews:All the protein options on menus.

14:11Sal Di Stefano:I mean, if you guys are watching commercials and TV and some of that, I mean, Jack in the Box, Panda, like Starbucks, they're all marketing high protein everything. So they, I mean, they have high protein menus now and their commercials are geared towards Chipotle. they're geared towards come in and get your 30 70 or 90 gram protein meal like they're all pushing this high protein uh message like and i mean what did this came out uh less than a month ago part of

14:41Adam Schafer:it is the the the mainstream is starting to become privy to the benefits of uh diet that's higher in protein the atkins diet i think taught people that fat wasn't scary yeah took a while topic now it did make people think carbs were scary uh which they're not but definitely not that fat is scary and then you have the the now you have glp1 that's right the introduction of glp1 this is shaking up the entire that's right because now the medical community is like oh if you're on glp1 you need to eat yes high protein to prevent muscle loss so you just take a perfect storm now to where mainstream now is like high protein high protein so you can see lots of high protein

15:19Sal Di Stefano:everything yeah uh you know it's i mean i'm telling you it is everywhere now everywhere everywhere i go i see it i see it at gas stations i see it in at starbucks now i see it at the panda i see it at the jack-in-the-box commercials chipotle i'm not mad at it no no it must be so hard no it's so find it it's so it's so crazy to see how quick that was i mean it was just it felt like just the other day uh you know we were constantly talking but now it feels like everybody is on board now with that.

15:48Adam Schafer:Totally. In 1992, the pyramid, you know, it said limit sweets, but it really didn't say anything about processed food. It didn't mention processed food. The new one, it talks specifically about processed food. In fact, it says words, literally, these are the quote, eat real food. So we finally have, and again, we have that whole food guide that talks about the power of whole natural foods. or should I say getting away from the dangers of ultra processed food. It's wholefoodguide.com, right, Doug? Doug, I want to make sure people get that. Yeah, Whole Foods. It's a free guide.

16:25Sal Di Stefano:I mean, I remember when we wrote this guide, we wrote this guide a long time ago. And when we first got together, and obviously we'd all been trainers for a long time before we had even got together and started the podcast. One of the things that was really cool, because we all have different backgrounds, we've trained a lot of different clients, but there was a handful of things that we had all come to the same conclusion on you know one of those being the way we program for our clients as far as the basic movements that we preach and talk about all the time the other one was the diet advice you know we and we all went through a phase where we used to write these elaborate diets and and you know weird things that we create yeah and meal plan for people and we'd all got to this place where no if i just told my client to cut out the processed food eat whole foods i give them an unlimited amount like literally even less parameters than this just say no processed foods eat whole foods you hungry go for it eat a steak you want some you want a baked potato eat it have a baked potato just eat real whole foods and what we found was how much that naturally regulated their their calorie consumption and then the next that's the first huge layer that got them to lose the first like 20 pounds of fat then the next layer was just like go get protein yeah let's do those whole soup or like that was it like literally those two things cut our processed foods it's like 90 plus percent and it's like that gets 90 of your clients in great shape it's crazy you said 20 pounds on average

17:58Adam Schafer:if i had a client who had to lose uh you know a decent amount of weight if they just were consistent just with eating only whole natural foods and that's all they did between 15 to 20 pounds they would lose. Easy. Just what just happened. Easy. And people need to understand this. There's this myth that we have this like, we're like eating machines. We have this appetite. I know. That just makes us eat. If there's food in front of us, we'll just eat until we're overweight. That's not true. That's not true. We have natural systems. We have natural regulators of satiety that tell us to stop eating.

18:30Adam Schafer:The problem is we've engineered food to bypass it. We've made, We've taken food, we've understood and really broken down scientifically what's called palatability, right? The enjoyment you get from food, which includes its taste, but it includes many other things. And we've broke it down like a drug. Yep. And then we've engineered food using these principles. And the result of which being, if you eat processed foods, you eat more. So you'll feel satisfied with way more calories than you would if you ate whole natural foods. If you look at a picture, I actually saw a picture of this the other day.

19:09Adam Schafer:I saw a picture of the amount of potatoes in a big, large bag of potato chips. And there was a table with them. It was like five potatoes and then the bowl of chips. And which one do you think you could eat all of? Of course, it'd be the potato chips. By the way, people think calories are a regulator of appetite. That's not true. In fact, the potato chips would have more calories than the potatoes because the potato chips are fried in oil. And yet I could eat way more and faster where I couldn't even finish the potatoes. So this is like a big deal. And the new food, this is the first time government policy has called out processed food, which is a big win because that industry, that food industry, that part of the food industry has a stranglehold on government policy because that's the moneymaker.

19:57Adam Schafer:Yeah.

19:58Justin Andrews:The entire way they make money is to make sure you keep consuming a lot of calories. And so it's like, that's been the entire motivation is to just keep buying product.

20:07Sal Di Stefano:To piggyback off of what you said about how much processed foods are designed to hijack our body's natural senses of satiety. It's so obvious. I know you guys aren't really into it. I love the show. It's on the History Channel. Netflix picked it up afterwards. It's called Alone. And it's the one where they drop 10 contestants out of the middle. The last season that just went, they dropped them in the Arctic Circle. right just and there's uh moose rabbit uh some fish that they could possibly catch and most of these people struggle just to get a meal a day and when you watch them eat a boiled you know you know squirrel head they are the the that they feel you can oh my god this is the nutrients yeah it's so crazy how much and you as a consumer watching the television going like it can't be that good but it's like when you haven't had anything and you've eaten nothing but off of the land with no salt no seasoning no nothing like it was hard to get you're you it's it's crazy how much we've changed our palates yeah through even ourselves right and what we i would you know we consider i i consider myself a good eater i eat primarily whole foods but we still season up like crazy and i still eat processed foods to get make its way to diet and so we have changed our palate so much and it's so and i remember when uh that never really like i knew that like uh uh intellectually as a trainer but i didn't really understand to what level until i competed when i competed it was the first time in my life that i was so strict for long periods of time like like a year so three years of like literally tracking and doing everything like and i remember going months of eating nothing but whole natural foods and i had to account for every single calorie and so eating processed anything makes it because they let it allow it to be 20 off i can't do that so and then i remember like here i am almost i'm 30 years old biting into an apple and i remember though i still remember thinking like whoa where did this one come from because it was so it felt it tasted so foreign to me because my whole life i grew up eating candy and things like that that it changed what vegetables and fruit tasted like that's right and it tasted so enjoyable and so rich and I thought, wow, that's so crazy that I've done that to myself.

22:32Sal Di Stefano:We've done that to ourselves.

22:33Adam Schafer:We have. And they've engineered these foods so well and they're so powerful that the brain reacts like it does to a drug in the sense that, this is why you notice this, is receptors start to down-regulate. Your brain starts to perceive this overwhelming sensation of texture and flavor. And it starts to kind of numb it down a little bit so that when you go eat an apple, if you always eat apple candy all the time, an apple is going to taste bland because your brain has changed how perceived things because it's getting blasted with these drug-like effects from processed foods. When you go off of them for a while, then you eat whole natural foods.

23:15Adam Schafer:You're like, okay. And so what happens is how your body regulates appetite and the food intake it's so hijacked and so off the side effect is obesity and disease yeah and the only way to control it is either a count everything that goes in your mouth and hold on to everything with your hands real tight and live this really stressful crazy life which doesn't work or allow your natural allow your body to naturally work the way it's supposed to by sticking this is why this is

23:45Sal Di Stefano:why and i know we all agreed on this when we first got together why i didn't like if it fits your macros. Yeah. Doesn't take you, doesn't count at all. Because it doesn't take this part of an account. And for the listener who's never been able to stick to a quote unquote diet for a long enough period of time to get themselves in that shape, if you don't put these crazy parameters and the only parameter you put is just eat whole foods, eat as much as you want, but just eat whole foods, you do that long enough. And those normal foods actually start to taste amazing. And if you do it even longer than those other things you get a bit repulsed by and they're too overwhelming for your senses that's right and and it's easy to naturally but you let it creep in long enough

24:28Adam Schafer:and then they'll readapt again and the other part of the is this is that and this is again why i'm so excited about because it's it's not perfect i don't think the whole the new food pyramid is perfect and we'll get to that in just a second there's some things i would like to add but i love that they said for the first time avoid processed food eat real foods i mean people need to understand big deal when you look at the food uh the food industry the margins on potatoes are nothing compared to the margins on potato chips the margins on wheat are nothing compared to the margins on crackers in other words processed foods have the big margins they make the money and those are the lobbyists.

25:09Adam Schafer:Those are the people that go in and pay for these new policies. So the fact that we came out and suddenly said, eat real food is really amazing and remarkable. Now, here's where I think they should have gone. I think the protein recommendations, although they're way better. Should have been higher. I think they should have added, they should have made it higher. And I think what they should have said was, for people who are dealing with or worried about muscle loss, who are exercising or strength training or interested in weight loss, eat more protein and also eat it first. It makes a big difference.

25:43Adam Schafer:Other than that, I think they did. The fruit and vegetable recommendations in there are relatively the same from the 1992, which was okay. So I think this is great. I think we're entering into a new era of awareness around food.

25:54Sal Di Stefano:Well, it's so cool to see this because when you think, I mean, I don't remember what year it was when we wrote the whole food guide. Because in the guide, we also help somebody who's never tried to do this. Like we take you steps there. It's not just like, here's a pyramid, follow this. It's like, here's how we recommend, how we used to coach clients through that process to get there. I mean, this is it. The difference is what you're saying right now is like that we have a higher recommendation towards the protein, but it's really close to this. That's right.

26:21Adam Schafer:So let's talk about practical applications. How can we do this? Number one, you're aimed for, if you're a woman, between 25 to 35 grams of protein per meal. If you're a man, about 40 to 50 grams of protein per meal. Eat it first, and then the rest can be whatever. Eat until you're satisfied. Single-ingredient foods. That's what a whole natural food is. Whole natural food is, that's the thing. Meat, that's the thing. Egg, that's it. Apple, that's it. Rice, there it is. Potato, there it is. Broccoli, there it is. When it has multiple ingredients, if it has a long shelf life, comes in a box or a wrapper, this is called processed food.

26:59Adam Schafer:By the way, this is going to piss off people. This also extends to the health food segment of foods that are processed, which you also see. Protein bars and shakes. And although they're in a different category, they're still in that processed food category. And so although I think there's use for them, especially for hitting protein targets and the like, the goal is whole natural foods.

27:23Sal Di Stefano:So, you know, to play devil's advocate or defend things like that, that we all admittedly use ourselves today. When I'm coaching a client, I want us to first do this. Yes. Right. And then you learn to intermittently introduce those types, those other things like that. But if you want to get back to that place where you crave a vegetable or crave a fruit, which, by the way, I thought was impossible because I had in my entire life. because since a kid, I was introduced to candies and sweets and it was never not a part of my life until I got older. I didn't realize, and I know I'm not alone. I know I'm not alone on people that believe that fruits and vegetables are bland or boring or what that.

28:08Sal Di Stefano:But if you do this for an extended period of time, it changes into this enjoyable thing. Then once you've had that and you've changed that chemistry and then you now have that connection to it and a different relationship with it, then it becomes a primary source or the primary fuel that you use and then okay and then occasionally i realize oh wow i'm having a low day on protein i can have that a protein shake to help me out there and you're not like you're not going to switch from that to all of a sudden going other direction and you still realize but teaching somebody that so they can feel it sticking to the whole foods first before you introduce those other tools totally and again i'm going to say it

28:42Adam Schafer:one more time here at the end uh it's a free guide it's a guide the ultimate guide on whole food eating and diet. It's wholefoodsguide.com. You can also find us on Instagram, Mind Pump Media. We'll see you there.

28:55Justin Andrews:Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes Maps Anabolic, Maps Performance, and Maps Aesthetic, nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price.

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