Almost everyone today remembers different food pyramids, but not many people actually know just how long USDA’s (United States Department of Agriculture) history is of providing “science” based dietary guidance and (mis)information to the American public. Starting over a century ago, USDA has instructed Americans to make “healthy” food choices by providing a number of publications and food recommendations. From 1916 to the 1930s, there was “Food for Young Children” and “How to Select Food.”
Then in the 1940s, there was “A Guide to Good Eating.” It basically included a daily number of servings needed from each of the seven food groups. From 1956 to the 1970s, people had something called “Food for Fitness, a Daily Food Guide.” That protocol consisted of 4 food groups: milk group, vegetable fruit group, bread cereal group, and finally meat group. Then in 1979 Hassle-Free Daily Food Guide was introduced, and after that, there have been several modifications.
Then in 1992, the United States Department of Agriculture introduced the “Food Guide Pyramid” or “Eating Right Pyramid.” It was revised in 2005 to “MyPyramid,” and then it was replaced by “MyPlate” in 2011. So basically, there you have it, many food recommendations over the last decades which were and are still very similar in many countries. All of those should apparently provide people with the best choices for their health, yet we have so many unhealthy people worldwide, especially in the USA.
Health Statistics
According to WHO, worldwide obesity has almost tripled since 1975. In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults were overweight. Of these, over 650 million were obese. Another scary example is diabetes. The number of people with diabetes grew from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014. The global occurrence of diabetes among adults increased from 4.7% in 1980 to 8.5% in 2014. Those numbers are alarming, especially if we consider that every year we apparently receive better and better information about how to eat healthily.
Everyone can probably remember different communications over the years:
- “Eggs are unhealthy.”
- “Eggs are healthy.”
- “Fat is really bad for you.”
- “No, you should eat fat.”
- “This product is sugar-free and thus good for you.”
- “We need to eat a low-fat diet, and everything will be fine.”
- “Plant oils are great for you.”
- “Well, maybe some are not.”
- “You will get cancer if you eat xyz.”
- “XYZ will save you from cancer for sure.”
Profit and Food
Of course, one must not disregard the conclusion that many people deliberately continue their whole lives with the wrong food selections. Nevertheless, many are also trying to follow popular guidance only to end up being even more unhealthy. Now, why is this happening? Well, one of the main reasons is again profit. Food companies also need to earn money, and they are doing that (in many cases) by (falsely) advertising the nutrition value of their products while real “value” is almost always hidden in small text. They are trying to produce products with the least cost and, while they’re at it, sell you the “healthiest” choice. The healthy part is the problem here, especially in the last ten years where we see so many artificial products being sold as healthy substitutes. That’s why we see a decrease in meat consumption and an increase in plant-based food. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing bad with plant-based food, but propaganda lately is just too strong not to ask some questions.
Basically, every young “urban” man and woman are now deciding on a plant-based diet mostly because they are led to believe they are saving the planet by decreasing CO2 and also saving animals. There is much debate on both of those points, and there are many conclusions that by going vegan, you’re neither saving animal lives as much as you think, nor you’re contributing to a significant decrease of CO2. I mean, sure, if you’re not eating animals, then you’re surely not contributing to killing them directly, and that’s really commendable.
However, many small animals also die from big combine harvesters during the process of producing vegetarian foods. It’s not the same, of course, especially when compared to big & awful slaughter farms, but we need to take this into consideration if we would like to be objective. We need to be aware that veganism does not eliminate the suffering and death of other animals but it is the best option to dramatically reduce it. In that sense, let’s dive a little bit deeper.
As you probably know, livestock farmers are demonized around the world (and some should be but not all for sure). According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the cultivation of animals such as cows produces “almost 1/3 of all emissions from the agriculture sector,” which is responsible for nearly 9% of the planet’s greenhouse gas output. Moreover, they add that manure management on these farms accounts for almost a fifth of the farm sector’s greenhouse gas footprint. Based on that, many are jumping to conclusions like: we all need to replace our burgers with “veggie burgers,” swap the cheese for carrot and replace the butter with “vegetable spread,” and there you have it – the world is solved both from a human health perspective and „Earth health.“ But is it really that simple? If we look deeper – no, it is not!
Saving the Earth?
First, we need to be aware that today around 1,45 billion people are vegetarians not because they prefer vegetables and are concerned about Earth but simply because of big poverty. So, when doing calculations, they should be excluded from the equation. Let’s look at some figures on how much we are actually contributing by eating an only plant-based diet. By some peer-reviewed studies (NCBI: Dietary greenhouse gas emissions of meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians, and vegans), going vegetarian will reduce an individual’s emission by the equivalent of around 1200 lbs of carbon dioxide. In today’s industrial world, that would mean an emission cut of around 4%.
While this sounds significant, it ignores the so-called “rebound effect.” Namely, since vegetarian diets can be slightly cheaper than meat diets, then individuals will save money and consequently spend it on other goods and services that are causing extra greenhouse emissions. With these extra spendings, one individual is thus not knowingly increasing his or her greenhouse emissions, canceling the beforementioned savings caused by a vegetarian diet. According to a study of the environmental impact of Swedish vegetarians, it seems that going completely vegetarian for the rest of your life means you reduce your emissions by about 2%. Basically, going vegetarian or vegan can help; however, when numbers are put in context, we see that impact is rather low and can be disregarded if/when other means of consumption are added.
The Whole Circle – from Propaganda to Food to Health to Earth
What does that have to do with food schemes and health overall? Well, it has a lot to do with it. Namely, while vegetable products are healthy for humans, some people for sure have health challenges when only using vegan products. So those products should not be pushed to humans as propaganda for the healthiest way of living for everyone. Many people will not do their research and will not listen to their bodies – they will just go with the flow with what is recent popular propaganda. Add to that virtue-signaling component of “I am saving the planet,” and then we have a problem. So basically, there we have a full circle on how to make people believe what to eat:
- Make everyone believe that some food choices are damaging to the Earth (and them individually). Which is true in some cases, don’t get me wrong, but in many cases, it is just propaganda.
- Make everyone feel like heroes helping the Earth with their food choices.
- Based on that, invest billions in the marketing of those food choices and products.
- Fund many research studies which will, of course, show results aligned to the biggest investor interests.
- Invest in organizations producing food pyramids.
- Confirm people’s beliefs with constant talks about global warming and how changing your diet can make you a hero (again, don’t get me wrong, some food choices on a global scale can help climate change problems, but still, unfortunately, there are a lot of deceptive assumptions).
- Repeat.
Based on that, in one or two generations, we will have entirely new beliefs on what we should eat and how we should save the planet. I am all up for saving the planet in every possible way and having various food choices, but I am not really happy with so much propaganda being laid down in front of us. This has an impact on people’s lives and should not be under such a big influence of different organizations, food corporations, and political parties. And unfortunately, today, it is probably under the biggest influence in history.
