The Food Pyramid Exposed: Here's What No One Is Telling You!

33:15Now, this is the challenge with an ambiguous animated pyramid. It leaves so much open to interpretation. With that said, without making a snap judgment, the recommendations in these new guidelines for saturated fats are still the same as the previous recommendations, advising the public to keep saturated fat below 10 % of total daily calories. Now, another argument can be made that that's not really even possible with the foods that they're recommending. And again, this is based on the appearance of a graphic and not the actual advice. And so we can absolutely construct a nutrition format for ourselves and for our families that is under 10 % of saturated fat and getting in a wide variety of these different foods at the same time.

34:12But regardless of this fixation on saturated fat, this is an important point of reference because most people, including people working in the healthcare industry, are largely unaware of why saturated fats are such a volatile issue in the first place. I know that I was taught in my university education point blank that saturated fat is, quote, bad fat, and it increases the risk of heart disease. But is this true? Well, let's start this understanding of saturated fat with the only food that we know for sure is a human food. And it's the first food that we have when we come into this world. And it's enabled us to have life here on this planet and to continue to grow and evolve as a species.

35:08And of course, I'm talking about human breast milk and the fats that make up this first and primary human food. The fats that make up breast milk are 35 % to upwards of 50 % saturated fat. It's critical for the development of our brain and nervous system, as well as creating the membranes of all of our cells and so much more. Giving this example, this does not mean that we need copious amounts of saturated fat as an adult human. Not at all. But it's a point to illustrate that looking at a nutrient that has enabled us to develop as a species and build our complex brain and nervous system, to simply categorize it superficially as bad is dangerous and silly at this point.

36:03It's just immature to label this critical fat for our survival as bad. We've got to move beyond that. We've got to move beyond that. With that said, where did the demonization of saturated fat come from? And do we have studies affirming that saturated fats are dangerous? Of course we do. For one, we have the often cited Nurses' Health Study. It determined that, quote, higher dietary intakes of major saturated fatty acids are associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, unquote. but we have to look at the quality of the data that was collected. This was not a randomized controlled trial.

36:47This was largely observational information based on surveys that people filled out every couple of years about what they remembered eating. Can we find value in this? Yes, absolutely. This type of information can give us trends and correlations for us to further investigate by constructing randomized trials. But the bottom line is there is no causality found between saturated fat and disease in a study like this whatsoever. There's no causality. It's pretty loose correlation. And that's okay. We're continuing to ask questions and to investigate and to find out what is true for ourselves and for our families.

37:32And of course, we have other well-vetted observational studies that find the exact opposite. For instance, another massive decade-long study that included over 130 ,000 participants and data from 18 countries used national surveys and found that total fat and saturated fat and unsaturated fats were not significantly associated with risk of myocardial infarction or cardiovascular disease mortality. The study also found that higher saturated fat intake was associated with lower risk of stroke. They found that higher carbohydrate intake was associated with an increased risk of mortality. This study, like the nurse's study, was published in one of our most prestigious medical journals, this one being The Lancet.

38:27But also, just like the nurse's health study, this is pointing to associations and trends. and it cannot possibly prove causality. Now, compare these studies to an actual randomized trial comparing notable sources of saturated fat, specifically butter, olive oil, and coconut oil, for more real-world clarity. The scientists are now far better able to track the food and amounts consumed, which minimizes confounding data and bias seen in those other studies. This study titled Randomized Trial of Coconut Oil, Olive Oil or Butter on Blood Lipids and Other Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Healthy Men and Women was published in the BMJ.

39:21One of the findings from this study was that while coconut oil is approximately 90 % saturated fat, almost pure saturated fat, it was found to significantly lower the risk of cardiometabolic disease. remarkably the results of the study affirmed it's not merely the presence of saturated fat but quote the processing methods as well as the foods in which they are found in this is what wilbur atwater was pointing to it's not just about these ratios it's also about the foods that we find them in. And he was existing at a time when ultra-processed foods were not lining our grocery store shelves or surrounding, dare I say, inundating our communities with fast foods and ultra-processed foods.

40:20It was a different time where that point of clarity didn't have to be so strong, but it was still a point of clarity. Yes, we want to be mindful of these macronutrients, But we also need to be mindful of the sources that they're coming from and not isolating food into nutrients because humans eat food, not just isolated nutrients. In essence, your body doesn't respond to saturated fat and abstract. It responds to the structure, the chain length, metabolism, and the food matrix that the fat comes packaged in. The bottom line being that there is a key difference in naturally occurring saturated fats, which are found in ample amounts in things like avocados versus deep fried foods, Little Debbie snack cakes.

41:17A Little Debbie snack cake can be around seven grams of saturated fat per serving. And this is one of my favorites growing up, like when they would have the Valentine's ones come out. the little Christmas, the little tree cakes and the zebra cakes. Oh my goodness. Favorite. It's the saturated fat in ultra processed foods like these cakes and cookies and chips and fast foods and newly invented products. Not the saturated fats found in real natural health affirming foods that humans have been eating for thousands of years. We've got to stop this. We've got to stop vilifying foods that humans have been eating for thousands of years and minimizing the effect of these newly invented ultra processed foods that have become the dominant foods that we have access to and also the dominant foods that we are now eating as a society.

42:21According to the most recent estimates, American adults are now eating around 60 % ultra processed foods as far as the makeup of the overall diet. We're not even having a conversation. We're talking about these new guidelines about real food. People are battling about this in this echo chamber. People are going back and forth and having these criticisms, constructive criticisms, but also outright hatred. And other people are just full on endorsing and supporting the whole thing. And it's an echo chamber. People are preaching to the choir. They're missing the point on what is most important and real for the people who are not even looking at these guidelines.

43:06And just eating based off of what is around them and what they can survive on. That's where I come from. the real issue is not real food. The real issue is all of the fake food, the newly invented food that is now lining our store shelves. And so we'll dig deeper into some of these specific sentiments and some of the criticisms for this pyramid and previous that helps to bring it all together so we can know where these ideas come from and we can make better choices for ourselves. But the bottom line here is, in this context of encouraging the consumption of healthy fats. This should have never been straight away from.

43:52This has always been a focus of healthy human beings around the world. Before we even knew what the term dietary fat was, it was just in the context of eating real food. This war on framing fat as a villain has to come to an end. In a 2002 meta-analysis from researchers at Harvard, they stated, quote, within the United States, a substantial decline in the percentage of energy from fat during the last two decades has corresponded with a massive increase in the prevalence of obesity, unquote. We've got to do better. We've got to support each other and come together and have healthy discussions and start to look at the bigger picture and not just isolating these small pieces so that we can find something to be upset about.

44:51The fact that we are all talking about these nutrition guidelines is a win. It's a huge win for us as a society because I've been in this field for well over 20 years and I have never seen this much conversation around nutrition. I was working in this field in the days of it just didn't matter that much in the context of health. And this was according to the education that I was getting in a university setting. nutrition education was minimized in lieu of studying diseases and medications and treatments for the diseases that are caused by poor nutrition. All right. And also our nutrition guidelines dictating that we be very adamant about avoiding fat with no context for that fat and being adamant about including upwards of 11 servings of grains without any context for those grains.

45:53We've made some great strides and we should celebrate that. This is not perfect. We are not in a perfect place, but we need to get together and operate with more intelligence and cohesiveness, regardless of where the nutrition information is coming from. It's up to us as individuals and it's so powerful that we're able to have these conversations and to share our voice. But we need to be much more responsible with that. Now, another point of contention are the guidelines that emphasize the inclusion of, as the new guidelines state, quote, high quality nutrient dense protein foods as part of a healthy dietary pattern, unquote.

46:42Again, it's recommended as a part of a healthy diet pattern, not to eat an excessively high protein diet as it can easily be mistaken to be. Because again, this ambiguous, silly cartoon graphic has got a lot of turbulence attached to it. And I didn't see this when I was in my nutritional science class in college. People were not upset about the food pyramid, which this is awesome that we're talking about it. But again, it's not recommending a high protein diet. And there are two specific reasons that I can stand behind and understand in the context of encouraging with intention high quality food-based, real whole food-based sources of protein.

47:39From a purely metabolic standpoint, increasing the emphasis on high quality protein can be beneficial for our metabolically unhealthy and overweight population. one we have the thermic effect of food when you eat a food there's a gross intake of calories of course that we believe to be there and there's a net intake of those calories in other words your body burns calories to process the calories that you just consumed and protein burns more calories than anything else giving you a significant less net calorie absorption when it comes to protein you're going to be burning 20 to 30 % of the calories that you consume with that protein in processing that protein.

48:30So you're going to be burning 20 to 30 % of it. When it comes to carbohydrates, it's going to be in the ballpark of five to 10 % of it is going to be burned to process it. While when it comes to digesting fats, only zero to 3 % of our energy that we're consuming is going to go into processing that fat that we're choosing to eat. Now, couple this protein intake with multiple studies affirming its standalone benefits as far as the significant increase in satiety hormones that get produced, as well as the reduction of hunger-related hormones. And we've got a pretty powerful one-two punch for supporting weight loss and fat loss.

49:17And we'll share more on that later. And these metabolic effects are why you see results like what was seen in a study that was published in the Journal of Nutrition in 2015, showing that increasing protein intake led to enhanced weight loss and reduced cardiometabolic risk in study participants. The researchers stated, quote, higher protein diets are associated with lower body mass index and waist circumference and higher HDL cholesterol compared to protein intakes at the recommended daily allowance levels. Our data suggests that Americans who consume dietary protein between one and one and a half grams per kilogram of body weight potentially have a lower risk of developing cardiometabolic disease, unquote.

50:06quote, that amount that is affirmed in that study is 0.45 grams to 0.68 grams per pound of body weight, which is spot on with the new protein recommendations from the USDA. Again, it's not about having a high protein diet. It is a more intentional focus on making sure that we're meeting those protein requirements to get those metabolic benefits. And you see, this information didn't come out of nowhere, by the way. The new recommendations from the USDA are not actually new. This information has been around for a long time. As a matter of fact, the study that we just cited that included nearly 25 ,000 people was from over a decade ago, and it was conducted by the highest levels of nutrition research by the U.S.

50:58Army. Now, to take this a year-old step further, Danish scientists at Copenhagen University Hospital published research featured in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition revealing that over the course of a five-year study, no macronutrient reduced the amount of belly fat for study participants more than protein had. The scientists noted that the outstanding results were particularly from animal-based protein, which is another point of conflict stirred up with the new USDA recommendations, but I think it's causing us again to miss the forest for the trees. This is not recommending a carnivore diet or anything of the sort.

51:36When I shared multiple aspects of it, eat plenty of fiber-rich foods, fermented foods, pay attention to your microbiome, eat whole grains. There are plenty of sentiments regarding that, but it's as if a carnivore diet is suddenly being recommended for some people, but it's not anything of that sort. the new recommendations make an emphasis on making the majority of your diet plant foods. Still, this is still holding true, including well-established sources of plant proteins. And the common critiques to this point of animal foods, the data has affirmed in study after study that the more concerning forms of those foods are the processed or older processed versions of it.

52:28you know, these hot dogs and things like that. So the connection is between processed meats and poor health, but this new model isn't recommending any processed meats. It's doing the opposite. And so that is in alignment with previous iterations of the food pyramid as well. Now let's talk about this shift in protein and healthy fats and reducing consumption of refined grains in the context of a real world scenario. A remarkable study conducted by researchers at St. Louis University, my hometown, and published in the International Journal of Obesity sought to discover what happens with weight loss when you eat a high carbohydrate breakfast, which was a bagel in this study, versus a naturally high protein and dietary fat breakfast, that being eggs, when the calorie count of the meals is exactly the same.

53:24Again, on paper, same amount of calories, two different sources of those calories. One low-fat, highly refined, very popular carbohydrate-based breakfast, which I had so many bagels in my life as well. That being a bagel versus a high protein and dietary fat whole food source of nutrition in the form of eggs. Now the researchers at the study participants to decrease their overall caloric intake by 1000 calories a day in the study, but had different people to use different macronutrient ratios for their first meal. Here's what they found after the eight week study period. The study participants in the egg breakfast group showed a 61 % greater reduction in body mass index, a 65 % greater weight loss, a 34 % greater reduction in waist circumference, and a 16 % greater reduction in body fat percentage.

54:34Please hear me. That is remarkable. it doesn't make any sense if we're looking at things through the lens of conventional thinking that it could have such an impact by choosing that food for breakfast but i'm here to tell you it's not just about the protein and the fat it's the fact that that is a real food that humans have existed on thrived on for thousands of years versus this newly invented thing with a hole in it that is delicious, cream cheese it. There's so many ways to have a bagel. And it's not to vilify the bagel. You can have a bagel. You can have that in the mix. It could be a part of the matrix that you create for yourself.

55:16But our emphasis should clearly not be on those foods like it was for decades. And so shifting that ratio and opening ourselves up to appreciating real food, to normalizing real food so that there's more real food on our store shelves, so that our accessibility to more real foods through our government spending is in alignment with what is real, with what is supportive of human health. Now, to be clear, these new guidelines are not the first to encourage the reduction of highly refined carbohydrates and grains in general as being the predominant part of our diets. Previous iterations have done that.

55:57MyPlate did that. But we've also got to understand that these different iterations of nutrition guidelines have not made much of a difference as far as the health of our society improving. And that's where we are today. And this wasn't merely about individual choice and compliance, because that can be an argument. If people just follow this, then they would get better. They would get the results. It's not merely about that. Of course, that's partially true. The guidelines that have come forward over the years, including the 1992 food pyramid, they changed what was accessible to our society. They changed what was accessible to our families.

56:41WIC program, SNAP, or when I was a kid, it was food stamps. School lunch programs, nutrition for the military. All of these programs and more have to be compliant with the USDA guidelines. And so these guidelines have tremendous influence that way as well. Again, I'm not speaking from theory. I'm speaking from experience. As a child who grew up in a low-income environment, and I was at the cash register with my mom getting the foods from the WIC program, And the majority of what we were able to bring home were breads, cereals, low-fat milk, beans, and juice. Of course, you get a cardinal of the eggs as well thrown in the mix, but it's mostly all of these carbohydrate-dominant, highly refined grains, and the like.

57:40And so, with this being said, again, even in that experience, I know what it's like. It wasn't a good cereal, by the way. It's King Vitamin. Damn, King Vitamin. All right, to this day, I wanted the Frosted Flakes, you know, the Trix, Fruity Pebbles, all that stuff. And we'd occasionally get that, but, you know, we get the free stuff and that's what we have. That's what we'd have to eat. And so these guidelines shape what families have access to in that context as well. So it does absolutely matter on multiple levels. And now with all of this rollout, there's now this sudden concern about who's funding these government nutrition programs and conflicts of interest.

58:25And I've been talking about this for over two decades. There's an argument to make that the whole thing, the whole thing dating back the food pyramid and beyond. That the whole thing is saturating conflicts of interest. Even though special interest groups like the National Dairy Council have been influencing nutrition policies for decades, right there at the top of the list of special interest groups influencing the dietary guidelines for Americans, to this day, is an organization known as Consumer Brands Association. They represent the nation's largest ultra-processed packaged food companies, with the top brands in candy, chips, and ultra-processed breakfast cereals.

59:13They're the most powerful player, arguably, in the whole thing. Grain-based companies like General Mills, the North American Meat Institute, the National Dairy Council, the American Beverage Association, Consumer Brands Association, and others have far-reaching influence in nutrition policy in the United States. That's a fact. It isn't suddenly just meat and dairy lobbyists calling the shots. It's been this way for decades, but the biggest one being called out with these changes is the ultra-processed food companies. And we should be celebrating that. It's the most important thing. It's the most important thing in the context of human nutrition.

59:59That is the most abnormal aspect of our diets. and fighting amongst ourselves, infighting in this echo chamber about nuances with real foods, we have a much bigger target that we can focus on as a society, as people who are dedicated to improving the health of our society. And this is addressing the influence and the power that these ultra-processed food companies have and the grips that they have on all aspects of our government and the very food environment that we're existing in right now as a people. So in essence, we think that we're making decisions about the foods that we're choosing or these nutrition guidelines are making the decisions about the foods that we're choosing.

1:00:52But we don't know what we don't know. Myself growing up in a low-income environment in what is now turned to be a glorified food desert, I didn't know that there was a difference. What I knew was these ultra processed foods were the things that were most available to me, that I was most exposed to. And there have been very intentional structures created in our society to make that possible. And even with these new nutrition guidelines coming out and expressly saying these ultra processed foods are the biggest problem. We've got to address this. We want the public to be mindful of this. This is something that anybody with a heart, even the Grinch, with the small, he got the whatever size is too small heart, he can get behind this.

1:01:50But unfortunately, one of the major arguments about this change in the nutrition recommendations is not about the science and the recommendations. It's about the people that it's perceived to be coming from. Even the United States Health and Human Services viral post about these new changes via social media comes along with the headline, quote, under President Trump's leadership, common sense, scientific integrity, and accountability have been restored to federal food and health policy. For decades, the dietary guidelines favored corporate interests over common sense, science-driven advice to improve the health of Americans.

1:02:34That ends today. The new dietary guidelines call for prioritizing high-quality protein, healthy fats, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and avoiding highly processed foods and refined carbohydrates, unquote. Now here's the rub. Whether or not we can agree with the sentiment to eat more real food and to encourage our society to avidly avoid ultra-processed foods, like that statement is saying, that first part of the statement is giving credit under President Trump's leadership. and it's highly volatile, highly inflammatory. But we also have to understand these new guidelines are not a result of President Trump's scientific assessment.

1:03:28No matter what you feel about him, he's not the one who created these guidelines, nor is he remotely following these guidelines himself. He eats like a child. Specifically, he eats like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone 2 when he's in that hotel by himself. And ironically, he bumped into Trump in that movie. All right. And this was affirmed by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy in describing Trump's diet. The interesting thing about the president is that he eats really bad food, which is McDonald's, and then, you know, candy and Diet Coke. but he eats and drinks and diet coke all times. He has a constitution of a deity.

1:04:13I don't know how he's alive. He's like a child who hit the lottery and his parents aren't around. So this information is not coming from him. And still he is not the only cast of these characters that people have these views about that many of them rightfully so that can dissuade us from working together and honoring and really locking in some of the benefits that can be seen for our society. Is a lot going wrong? Absolutely. Absolutely. But we don't want to allow ourselves to ignore or fight against any benefits for our communities because of where they're perceived to be coming from. And I know that's very difficult.

1:04:59It's very difficult to say that right now. But the changes that we're seeing right now, We would have never foreseen, you know, just even a few years ago, the good and the bad as well. And when I say bad, I do not mean saturated fat. And so what I want us to do is to, again, to have some introspection, to have some patience, to not make snap judgments, and for us to work together. And the fact that we have both sides is a problem. And the fact that we have two, if we're going to have sides, to have only two is crazy pants as well. And so with these new guidelines affirming eating more real food and reducing the consumption of ultra processed foods, let's stand behind that.

1:05:48We could talk about some of the semantics and some of the small pieces within the context of real food. Absolutely. Let's debate. Let's talk about that. Let's come together and work together on that. But this is our opportunity more than ever before to choose the story that we're going to write for our families moving forward. These people do not have the power. We have the power. I did not know that growing up in an environment where I was inundated with the results of those who would mean to take advantage of my health and my family's health and the small resources that we did have. But even in that environment, once I realized that I had agency and I had the power to choose, I no longer let any of these people control me.

1:06:45this has been my life and my life's purpose with that being said it's so volatile and I stood firmly on the fact that we have to work together as families and communities this is grassroots yes we want top-down change too but I am here my job my purpose is to empower you you said yes, you click play on this because you want to be better. You want better. You want better for yourself and for your family. And that's what I'm here for. And so I appreciate you so much for being on this mission with me. And it's up to us, truly. We are writing the story for our families, for our children, for our grandchildren, for our great, great, great grandchildren with the decisions that we're making today.

1:07:34And finally, finally, we're having conversations like this. And it's beautiful. But we do not want to miss the forest for the trees. And I'm asking for those who need to hear this to be more complimentary and to be more understanding and to be more patient. This does not mean that we do not have our feelings of distrust and anger. This means that we reach out and connect and have civility and love and care in our communication. And I know that change is at hand. This is a very, very important time in our history. There are a lot of problems, I know that. But the things that we can do and the things that we can change as a healthy nation, but that health, it's not just gonna come from the top down, it's from the bottom up and the decisions that we make, that we make each and every day where we're investing our dollars as families, that's where the real change is gonna come from.

1:08:48And you have access to that information and that empowerment. And if we work together, we extend a hand and help our neighbor, there's nothing we can't do. These people cannot control us. It's up to us. and we can influence the change that's happening. But we've got to see it. We've got to see the influence. We've got to appreciate the influence and appreciate these conversations instead of letting it drive us to more disenchantment and separation. I appreciate you so much for being a part of this mission with me. If you enjoyed this exploration and trip throughout time, I would appreciate it if you're watching on YouTube or on Spotify, leave a comment below and share your voice.

1:09:35It really does mean a lot. And please know that we are not stopping anytime soon. We've got the most amazing, amazing masterclasses in store for you. Some of the most incredible guests in the world today in store for you. So be ready. I appreciate you so much. Take care. Have an amazing day and I'll talk with you soon.