Comment by didibus
2 days ago
Is it? The change in recommendation is to have less veggies in favor of more meat. From all the recent research and meta studies I've seen it doesn't track.
It's still decent a guidance, but the previous one was as well.
The first food group listed is literally meat and dairy. The ordering here is purposeful, too, as they admit. One promo graphic includes a block of butter and a carton explicitly labelled "whole milk." This is a very definite downgrade.
Butter is king. It should be pictured with a crown, stars and glitter.
Surely whole milk is better than less-than-whole milk?
Why is that a downgrade?
Meat and dairy contain the bulk of the saturated fat in the average diet. It's pretty absurd to imagine a diet in which the largest food group is just meat and dairy, but due to the ordering, that almost seems to be implied.
The saturated fat → LDL-C → heart disease relationship has a lot of evidence and history behind it. A very interesting research project if you needed one. I call this advisory a "downgrade" because heart attack and stroke (among other conditions) are both: 1) downstream of saturated fat consumption, and 2) the most prevalent causes of death among people in the developed world.
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Dairy/Meat are both inflammatory and overconsumption contributes to a whole host of medical disease.
Some protein is obviously desirable, but the ratios, like anything else in chemistry/biology, are paramount.
I don't think the USA has a problem with under consumption of meat and dairy. If anything, it has a long standing overconsumption problem.
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"The first food group listed is literally meat and dairy."
that's because the pyramid is presented pointy end down.
You're literally just lying.
The first thing shown on the website is - broccoli.
The top of the pyramid includes both protein (meat, cheese) as well as fruits & vegetables.
The reason that meat is shown first is probably that it's the bigger change (it's been demonized in previous versions), whereas vegetables were always prominent.
The first thing on the website is indeed broccoli. But the first thing in the new inverted pyramid, both on the website and in other graphics of it, is meat. In fact, on the website, when you first get to "The New Pyramid", you'll first see only the left half, the one that has meat and other proteins; you'll have to scroll more to see the right half with vegetables and fruit.
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The only difference from the previous guidance is that it's suggesting eating more meat and dairy, which would come at the expense of veggies, legumes, nuts and seeds.
To be honest, I don't totally disagree from a practical angle. I think we have to acknowledge that most Americans failed to eat large portions of non-processed veggies, legumes, nuts and seeds. The next best thing might be to tell them, ok, at least if you're going to eat meat and dairy in large portions, make sure it's non-processed.
I've found for myself, it's hard to eat perfectly, but it's easier to replace processed foods and added sugar with simpler whole meats, fish and healthy fats like avocado, eggs, etc. And since those have higher satiety it helps with calorie control and so you avoid eating more snacks and treats which are heavily processed and sugary.
That said, in a purely evidence based health sense, it's not as good as the prior ratios from what I've seen of the research.
And that's going to dictate nationwide purchasing policies for things the the 30 million school lunch meals, million prisoners...
This is worth millions of dollars a day and we're sold it as common wisdom from the mom and pop country doctor.
Kids in the US will no longer be served reheated pizza and chocolate milk?
Whatever the incentives, go for it
the rectangular pizzas were never "reheated". i have copies of the recipe cards to make enough trays of pizza to feed a school using the industrial kitchen appliances they have in schools.
and whatever your issue is with chocolate milk, can you link a recent survey that shows the percentage of say, americans, that have had 1 or more glasses of water in the last month? a glass being at least 8floz (1/4 liter or so)
i'm leaning toward "most people don't drink enough, if any, water; furthermore most people are probably varying levels of dehydrated", at least in the US. The fad of carrying water with you everywhere was lambasted into obscurity, at least in the american south. Anecdotally, many people have told me they drink 64 ounces a day, because diet coke counts and so does beer.
that a kid is getting a fortified delicious drink they enjoy is fine by me.
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And here in largely vegetarian India, everyone is now pushing for more protein and meats because a vegetable-heavy diet has been awful for our public health
I think the biggest health issue with India's vegetarian food is too many carbs.
Carbs and butter.
If you look at a lot of the indian vegetarian dishes you'll find things like potatoes fried in butter being a staple.
Chickpeas and yogurt do make a showing, but a lot of indian dishes are devoid of vegetarian protein sources. You need a lot more beans/nuts if you want to eat healthy as a vegetarian.
If you want to actually get full and satiated with a largely vegetarian diet, you will eventually resort to carbs
And this is for a culture that really knows how to make smashingly good vegetarian dishes
I love my vegetables, but a vegetable-heavy diet is clearly not something that everyone can or should do. The people I know who retain their health with vegetarian/vegan diets are usually really well-versed in nutrition
Even if Indians ate 2x the meat that they do now, they wouldn’t consume anywhere as much as Americans do. Increasing meat consumption in America is not necessary.
India would do well to consume more protein, and the US would do well to consume less
has your government published any science on this? being completely serious, i'd like to read it. Is India mostly vegetarian because of lack of access to farms/meats, religious reasons, financial, or what? I didn't know it was largely vegetarian. I don't know i had an idea of the ratio or that it would be different than any other country.
Apparently the Mediterranean also is largely vegetarian. at least the eponymous diet is.
Most branches of hinduism condemn meat eating, so this has created a significant pressure against meat production (same as you'll find little production of pork in the Middle East and North Africa). This is not universal, of course, because historically many regions of India had large meat-eating muslim populations as well.
Note that this is typically lacto-ovo-vegetarianism, not veganism.
Maybe home cooking is, but every restaurant meal I bhave eaten near the Mediterranean had seafood or cheese in it.
Edit: you said vegetarian not vegan, and yeah lot of pasta dishes are vegetarian but not vegan.
Well if you cook the vegetables in litres of ghee that’ll happen.
If you don't cook vegetables in plenty of fats, you will end up feeling unsatiated - at least the vast majority would if that's their only meal
Salads are great, but eat them 7x a week for 2x meals a day and most will end up binge eating some absolute trash just to feel full