This kind of conspiratorial thinking blows my mind. The claim is: big ag, with all their grain production, wants Americans to eat lots of grains, and corrupts government agencies to recommend such diets. The real healthy diets include lots of “protein” (meat), but “they don’t want you to know”...
What’s incredibly absurd about this is: where do you think the vast majority of the farmed grain goes? Feeding the cows, chickens, and pigs providing your “high protein” diets. If these “big ag” businesses did have any sway or disinformation campaigns, they’d absolutely be pushing the “eat more meat” narrative.
There’s no conspiracy. There aren’t any u-turns in nutritional science. The USDA guides are almost completely identical to WHO nutritional guides, and the guides for virtually every other modern country. Lots of whole grains, fruits, vegetables. Limit sugars, salt, and fats. As Michael Pollan says: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. That’s pretty much it. We complicate things so much with fear mongering and conspiracy thinking.
It's not a conspiracy per se. I don't think Big Ag and the government got into a room together and said, "we're going to kill everyone over time with a Western diet leading to obesity, type 2 diabetes, and eventually death". It's more simple than that: greed of industry and regulatory failure on the part of government. Mexico has one of the highest rates of Coca Cola consumption, it's even fed to babies instead of formula. You know why it can't be stopped? Multinational power and greed, with trade weaponized against countries who attempt to counter these multinationals [1]. In country, instead of trade, it's campaign contributions to representatives that keep more substantial regulation at bay.
But you simply cannot argue that Western diets aren't causing epidemic levels of obesity and civilization disease [2], and that food producers and government aren't contributing to it.
Sidenote: Was "they don’t want you to know” a Kevin Trudeau reference? If so, I get that reference!
No no. I think we agree that there are capitalist-driven incentives that may be at odds with providing the best nutritional advice.
Where we differ (it seems?) is the implication that a diet rich in animal products (meat, cheese, eggs, etc) isn’t part of the Big Ag industry, but pasta, bread, cereal, etc. are. Livestock consume far more grain than the human population. So again, if big ag had any say (which, of course they do), they’d profit most by encouraging the consumption of meat, cheese, and eggs, not encouraging people to eat bread, pasta, and oatmeal. The fact that the USDA recommends eating whole grains at all is implicit proof that it’s not entirely corrupted by big ag.
I would agree with this, and concede that my original comment was not as accurate as it could be representing historical events that have led us to this point.
Couldn't you also argue that stakeholders who profit off low carb / sugar diets would also have a vested interest to push biased media about the benefits of low carb / fat diets?
Who are the stakeholders in "low carb"? Influencers? Sure, there are always going to be folks selling shovels, but the information on how to adhere to a low carb diet is freely available, and fat/protein macro foods readily available and fungible (I agree you'll have a slightly more difficult time to adhere to low carb if you're vegetarian or vegan, but it can be done, my partner and I tried it for fun to see if we could). You can spend an inordinate amount for your keto lifestyle, but you can also spend modestly and still arrive at the same results (whether that be weight loss, maintenance of a healthy weight, or management of a condition that is exacerbated by high blood sugar levels).
Eat properly ("abs are made in the kitchen", you can't work off excessive carbs consumption). Get enough sleep. Find time to exercise (high impact short duration cardio, weight lifting are best IMHO). These basics will contribute to a long, healthy life.
I hope this is helpful to someone, anyone! I was obese from my early teens (pizza and Mountain Dew, sigh), and only in my 30s after much research and experimentation am now in the best shape of my life (healthy BMI, low mile time, targeting a powerlifting competition this year). Everything I learned was from free online resources (r/fitness, r/keto, r/intermittentfasting wikis and discussions), and most of our food purchased at Aldi and Costco.
Sidenote: Keep in mind pricing is a signal. All of this information is free, and yet people still spend enormous amounts of money in aggregate on similar self-help materials with lesser results. Food for thought.
Arguably the meat industry, since most low carb people eat more meat. Yes, vegetarian is possible, but I don't know any vegetarian low carbers, while I know a lot of vegetarians and a lot of low carbers eating bacon for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The meat industry probably has a similarly big lobby as the sugar industry.
I've dropped 8Kg in the last half year by going mostly vegetarian and lowering my dairy intake. I eat more carbs than before. I don't think keto is the whole truth.
As always, the "truth" is a moving target and is going to be highly variable depending on circumstance. You should do what works best for you. If that's practicing vegetarianism, awesome. If that's being mostly a carnivore and eating chicken and bacon every meal, go for it. Somewhere in the middle works too (mostly vegetarian, occasional meat, majority of protein sourced from eggs and whey protein). But refined sugars are not your friend. Put that soda down!
Industry lobbying is deplorable, but inevitable. Consumer education (see my comment above) is paramount (with a helping hand of government regulation) in mitigating its impact on consumer behaviors.
>while I know a lot of vegetarians and a lot of low carbers eating bacon for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
is that because everyone has fallen for an extreme of a fad diet?
It's like everyone comes up with the right observation, and the wrong conclusion. "Low carbs are good, so ill eat fat protein. Meat is fat and protein" instead of "seeds and mushrooms." Or "meat is bad" so "ill eat lots of cereals" instead of "leaves and shoots."
Seeds, shoots, and leaves with some bottom feeding ocean animals is a perfectly doable diet.
The USDA food pyramid favored grains because that is what the US farming could produce in greatest quantity at the time it was developed, thanks to machine-assisted farming tasks. Grains had enormous combine harvesters that could be operated by one person and harvest the whole field within a day. Produce like tomatoes were limited by the number of Mexicans and Central Americans that could be admitted by the guest worker program and could carry filled harvest bags to the collection point, for a few weeks at the right time of year.
Now machine harvesting and factory-style farming has expanded to some fruits and vegetables, using things like hydroponic lettuce tracks, horizontal trunk-shakers, vertical limb-shakers, and flexible-fingered robot arms. Or even when hand-harvested, the human pickers can follow behind a processing rig that trims, washes, sorts, and packs right there while rolling over the field, and transports the product out via portable conveyor belt.
Cauliflower, muskmelons, lettuces, culinary herbs, cabbages, and tree nuts have all benefited from harvest mechanization. Farms can even, at minimum, use a fleet of golf-cart-like vehicles, so that human harvesters can gather the crop from a seated position, rather than, standing, stooped, or crouched, and allow the vehicle carry the weight of the produce, thus making each human harvester more productive, even when the harvest still requires hands, eyes, and blades.
The machines, of course, represent a hefty barrier to entry from the capital investment, and favor mega-agribusinesses. Farms that can't hire enough cheap transient laborers or buy the specialized machinery are priced out of the industry.
But it does bring cheaper lower-carbohydrate foods to the consumer in greater quantity.
What’s incredibly absurd about this is: where do you think the vast majority of the farmed grain goes? Feeding the cows, chickens, and pigs providing your “high protein” diets. If these “big ag” businesses did have any sway or disinformation campaigns, they’d absolutely be pushing the “eat more meat” narrative.
There’s no conspiracy. There aren’t any u-turns in nutritional science. The USDA guides are almost completely identical to WHO nutritional guides, and the guides for virtually every other modern country. Lots of whole grains, fruits, vegetables. Limit sugars, salt, and fats. As Michael Pollan says: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. That’s pretty much it. We complicate things so much with fear mongering and conspiracy thinking.