Comment by caycep
2 days ago
mostly because of the destruction of American science, public health and public safety the admin pushed through in order to publish this set of guidelines, instead of just hiring a professionally trained RD to write it up.
Didn’t those professionals give us the original food pyramid that told us to stuff our faces with bread? Weren’t they the same people that told us not to eat eggs because of cholesterol? And tell us to limit our fish consumption?
Maybe different areas of expertise aren’t equally valid, and even good experts often can’t see the forest for the trees in terms of developing actionable advice.
And tell us to limit our fish consumption?
The only recommendations to limit fish that I have seen are due to mercury exposure risks:
https://www.fda.gov/food/consumers/advice-about-eating-fish
Coal burning and incidental industrial releases drastically increased the amount of mercury in surface waters over the past century. The released mercury gets transformed by bacteria into organomercury compounds which are lipophilic and concentrate up the food chain, meaning that predator fish like tuna and swordfish can contain orders of magnitude more mercury than the water they live in.
There are plenty of fish with much lower mercury levels (like salmon, trout, and sardines):
https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-contaminants-food/mer...
You can eat all the salmon you want without worrying about mercury, and I haven't seen government advice to the contrary.
Your first link recommends limiting fish for children to 2 servings per week, even from the “best choices” list. By contrast it recommends kids 1-5 have two servings a day of other meat and poultry: https://www.parkchildcare.ie/food-pyramid-for-1-5-year-old-c...
Thats tantamount to a recommendation that fish should comprise a minority of your protein, which is backwards. It’s almost certainly healthier overall for fish to be your primary protein source and to eat red meat, chicken, and pork sparingly. How many servings a week of fish do you think Japanese kids eat?
This is incorrect reasoning. Science is advancing. It is like saying we should not listen to physicists because "Didn't those physicists gave us the original heliocentric system?"
also misleading. Nutrition science did not give the "food pyramid" quoted above, historically, it was Dept of Agriculture and associated lobbyists.
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This is an incorrect response in that this isn't about reasoning, this is about feels.
The food pyramid was the result of intense lobbying and political processes, not scientists and doctors.
No, that was the US Dept of Agriculture. You need to talk to an actual RD.
It was pushed by food lobbies, like a lot of topics in current admin
"The professionals" produced 2.5-3 laughably bad food pyramids depending on how you count. Of all the things this administration has done to "run around" the system on this or that issue, this is not gonna be one I'm gonna get pissed off about.
Food pyramid is a US Dept of Agriculture thing, not from any professional RD
Is the department of agriculture not "the professionals"?
And even if they weren't not a day goes by that government doesn't do things based on research/influence/numbers from academia that was produced with funding from a) the government b) the industry. So it's not like anything other option for deriving a food pyramid is free of questionable influence either.
Are you talking about "professionally trained nutritionists"?
Those people are worse than Astrologers.
At least astrologers stick to their fantasy, while, since I remember being old enough to count, I already lost track of how many times they've told us that "eggs are bad" and then "eggs are good" again, and then bad, and good, and... I've lost track.
Then they told us to eat cereal at breakfast, and that bread and potatoes are the basis of a good diet, then that fat is the killer and then that we should replace butter with plant based alternatives and the list goes on.
Nutritionists aren't scientists. They aren't even good at basic logic and coherence. So, no, I don't want them in charge of dictating policies.