[KempyKolibri]

The food pyramid put whole grains specifically at the base of the food pyramid. Not sure why you consider this objectionable, the body of evidence overwhelmingly points in the direction of benefits for wholegrain consumption.

Reduced fat is an interesting one. If you actually look at what Keys was investigating all the way back in the mid 20th century, the hypothesis was always that saturated fat increased CVD risk. The translation of that into policy and marketing aimed at total fat cannot be placed entirely at the feet of mainstream nutrition science.

As to the claims that sugar is addictive, this is unsupported - sugar does not meet the DSM-V criteria for addictive substances based on current evidence (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4899-8077-9_...)

As for added sugar - again, you’re labelling policy decisions as nutrition science. The DGs that I’m aware of recommend as little added sugar as possible, but when you’re making policy you have to strike a balance between strict enough to make a difference, but not so restrictive that no one listens. That’s different from what mainstream nutrition science would claim (which is indeed that there are no benefits to added sugar and several risks).

The same point applies to your claim that nutrition science has a role in getting people to adhere to satiating diets. No, nutrition science is to help us understand what those diets might look like. It is not responsible for getting populations to adhere to them.

[rendang]

>put whole grains specifically

This is false, in the 90s when I grew up there was no such criterion, and the posters of the pyramid prominently depicted sliced white bread.

The worst part of the food pyramid was the indication to use all fats and oils sparingly. There's never been any point in which the evidence suggested that olive oil or other monounsaturated fats should be avoided

[KempyKolibri]

Agree that the wholesale demonisation of fats was a massive failure of policy. Doubly frustrating because this was known - Ancel Keys' hypothesis was always about saturated fat specifically, and the Keys equation he devised showed the beneficial effects of PUFA. So mainstream nutrition science was on the money, but policy makers and companies less so.

[GuB-42]

The food pyramid makes economic sense.

Grains are cheap and energy dense, if your goal is to feed a large population it makes a lot of sense to put them at the base of the pyramid, that's what will keep you alive, as in, not starving. Higher up are fruits and vegetables, also cheap, they will provide with nutrients that you need to stay healthy on top of the calories that will keep you alive. Higher up are animal products, expensive but rich in proteins and a few other nutrients that are a bit lacking in the base layers, they help you get stronger and more performant in addition to healthy and alive. On top are pleasure foods, not really necessary for your body, but enjoyable.

I take it like a mirror of the "hierarchy of needs" pyramid rather than nutritional advice for people with effectively unlimited resources.

[mcmoor]

Yeah I always see it as the minimum thing to get if you have limited money. For poor people, most of your money is better utilized to get grains instead of meat.

When I saw it in my local village's clinic it makes sense because it actually encourages eating some meat and fruit instead of none, which is the norm here because of poverty.

[ASalazarMX]

The elephant in the room is that nutrition studies (whose results influence health and economic policy) are frequently funded by dominant players of the food industry, creating a huge conflict of interest. This has to end.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> The food pyramid put whole grains specifically at the base of the food pyramid. Not sure why you consider this objectionable, the body of evidence overwhelmingly points in the direction of benefits for wholegrain consumption.

Citation please or I'm calling extreme bullshit. Everything I've ever read has argued for putting more nutrient dense fruits and vegetables as the basis for a healthy diet.

More importantly, I think the nutrition community was woefully naive to the point of being negligent when they tried to defend the food pyramid. One quote I heard was "When we were recommending lower far intake, we never imagined Snackwells." Well, why TF not??? It should have been blatantly obvious that by demonizing fat and making people feel like carbs were "free" that companies would react appropriately and come up with fat-free, sugar-stuffed replacements that had a huge amount of calories, left you feeling unsatiated, and tasted like sweet cardboard. Probably even worse was frankenfood like Olestra.

I agree with the original point - while I think the field of nutrition science has improved a lot over the past decade, they have a ton to answer for and never did an appropriate "mea culpa" for all the great harm they caused.

[KempyKolibri]

What do you want a citation for? Which claim?

[tsimionescu]

Your claims that (1) the food pyramid put whole grains at the base, and (2) that there is any consensus at all that a healthy diet should include more whole grains than fruit and vegetables (which is what "being at the base of the pyramid" means).

[KempyKolibri]

Sure, here's a USDA article referring to the "1984 Food Guide Pyramid" where it states cereals should be whole grain (see p38: https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/42215/5831_aib...)

As for whole grains vs fruit vs vegetables, here's a SR and MA of studies looking at different food groups and the RR of all cause mortality: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000291652...

Three servings of whole grains per day: 0.79 (21% reduction in ACM) Three servings of vegetables per day: 0.89 (11% reduction in ACM) Three servings of fruit per day: 0.90 (10% reduction in ACM)

So the evidence seems to support the suggestion that consumers should focus on whole grain consumption as a base for their diet.

[riku_iki]

> Citation please or I'm calling extreme bullshit. Everything I've ever read has argued for putting more nutrient dense fruits and vegetables as the basis for a healthy diet.

pic from wikipedia named USDA pyramid 1995-2005: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_(nutrition)#/medi...

[hn_throwaway_99]

Wut? Was your comment a joke or satire? This entire thread is about how the food pyramid of that era was an unscientific disaster, so linking to a picture of it is not evidence.

[EasyMark]

If Americans actually stuck to the food pyramid they would be fine. No one does. It needed refinement to “eat whole grains and pasta, brown rice”, but it was hardly a disaster, the disaster is lack of people (adults) paying attention to it and instead eating crap out of boxes loaded with sugar, hydrogenated fats, and lots of ingredients they couldn’t pronounce let alone know how healthy or unhealthy they are. I saw lots of people paying lip service to it, but few people were sticking to it. Same with the current “my plate” ideas. People won’t tsit for 10 minutes and understand what they mean by protein, veggies, grains, and fruit.

[riku_iki]

you asked for citation of pyramid putting grains in foundation, you got it, not sure what you are complaining about now.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Sorry, I realized now, I quoted that section just to give context. I was really referring to "Not sure why you consider this objectionable, the body of evidence overwhelmingly points in the direction of benefits for wholegrain consumption."

Even with that first sentence though, the base of that shitty food pyramid really just doesn't talk about "whole grains" - it calls it the "bread, cereal, rice and pasta" group, with a graphic that includes spaghetti, crackers, a baguette, a bowl of cereal, etc. And having lived through that time when the food pyramid was taught in school, they certainly weren't delineating between highly refined flours and things like oatmeal, brown rice, quinoa, etc.

[riku_iki]

> Sorry, I realized now, I quoted that section just to give context. I was really referring to

looks like I agree with you on this part: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41964513

[riku_iki]

> The food pyramid put whole grains specifically at the base of the food pyramid. Not sure why you consider this objectionable, the body of evidence overwhelmingly points in the direction of benefits for wholegrain consumption.

my humble research found that diffs in nutrition between whole grains and refined grains carbs is very small compared to say whole grain to some complex carbs from leaf veggies. The same goes to glycemic index, satiety index, etc.

[EasyMark]

Which leafy vegetables have carbs? Are you talking about fiber? Most leaf veggies like spinach, kale, greens don’t have hardly any carbs at all.

[gnabgib]

Fiber is a carb https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/carbohydrates/fiber...

[hollerith]

Fiber is carbs, but unlike most of the carbs in the human diet, people cannot convert them into simple sugars.

[teytra]

The point is how much of the carbs are you actually getting. The fibers that you excrete isn't part of your net intake.

[hollerith]

By definition, the human body cannot convert fiber into carbs the human body can burn (but microbes do turn some of the fiber into short-chain fatty acids, which is fuel for human colon cells). That is how "fiber" is defined.

[riku_iki]

> Most leaf veggies like spinach, kale, greens don’t have hardly any carbs at all.

yes, because they consists of 90%-95% of water, then if you cook them, water evaporates and you get some amount of carbs.

But leaf veggies is one side of spectrum, with refined carbs on another, there are bunch of stuff in between.

[KempyKolibri]

In this comment there’s a link to a meta analysis of food groups and their effect on all cause mortality. A serving of whole grains would appear to be approximately twice as protective as either fruits or vegetables: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41965298

[riku_iki]

> A serving of whole grains would appear to be approximately twice as protective as either fruits or vegetables

this is not my reading of that study.

[KempyKolibri]

What’s your reading of that study and how does it disagree with the inference I’m making?

[riku_iki]

there was no control groups (veggies vs whole grains for example), they selected bunch of studies for metaanalysis with different goals and methodologies, no indications how balanced and what components where in diets in those studies.

This is exact example of junk science.

[KempyKolibri]

The control group is modelled from the different quintiles of consumption, so it’s false to say there’s no control group.

What differences in goals and methodologies have you identified that you believe renders them so different that they cannot be summated?

Not sure what you mean by “no indications how balanced and what components where in diets”, you’ll have to clarify.

[AStonesThrow]

Let's get real here: the benefits in the USDA Food Pyramid are benefits for agribusiness and the big subsidized food producers. The benefits that the USDA pushes have nothing to do with good nutrition for the average citizen. This is 100% "regulatory capture" as we call it around here. The Food Pyramid is a scam and a hoax, and the more it can be ignored, the better.

When I joined a Christian Health Sharing ministry, they determined that I needed remedial help, due to hypertension and dyslipidemia. They assigned me to monthly virtual meetings with a dietician. The dietician's advice horrified me, because it would've made me sicker, and exacerbated my conditions. I approached the ministry's administrators, requested a replacement dietician, and they replaced her alright. The new dietician had basically the same credentials and the same letters after her name, but she was way more flexible, listened to my reasoning, and supported my choices with encouragement.

My parents followed every "diet fad" in the 1970s-1980s, from 2% milk, to margarine, to yolk-less-egg-whites, to reducing red meat, to low-sodium everythings, to bottled fluoridated water. It was sheer torture and disgusting. My mother didn't know the first thing about flavor or pleasure in cooking, and never used the spices in her rack. Our food was always bland. For breakfast she'd slap down a jug of milk, a box of Chex, a bowl and a spoon, and abandon me to go do housework. I would sit there and read the mendacious lies known as "Nutrition Panel" on the side, and simply stewed in my resentment for the whole thing. It's a travesty.

[KempyKolibri]

Tbh I know it’s not what you’re going for, but your parents’ dietary decisions generally sound based AF (apart from bottled fluoridated water - depending on the fluoride levels in your drinking water that may or may not be beneficial).

Chex, I suppose it depends on whether it was wholegrain or not. Wholegrain cereal is associated with pretty good health benefits, refined not so much.

[tsimionescu]

Replacing butter with Margarine is "based AF" now?

[KempyKolibri]

Yes. Not so much at the time when some margarines had trans fats in, but now? Yes, absolutely. The evidence suggests that doing so significantly reduces one's risk of CVD.

[tsimionescu]

I don't think there is much reason to continue taking you seriously if this is supposed to be the sound scientific advice.

[KempyKolibri]

Why would we believe otherwise? The evidence suggests that replacing butter with margarine reduces LDL-c (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9771853/), and we have an enormous body of evidence showing that LDL-c is a causal agent in atherosclerosis (https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/38/32/2459/374510...).

So why wouldn’t replacing butter with margarine be a positive step for one’s cardiovascular risk profile?

[literalAardvark]

Given the knowledge available to them in the 70s, yes. A mistake, but done for good reasons (lowering satfat).

[KempyKolibri]

Problem in the 70s was trans fats. Now they're no longer a risk, replacing butter with margarine is a solid evidence-based decision for one's health (though not so much for one's enjoyment!).

[literalAardvark]

Hang on, there's such a thing as non-trans margarine? Sheesh, I'm behind the times.

(And really, margarine can be plenty tasty. As a kid I actually preferred it to butter for some reason.)

[AStonesThrow]

Okay, the cereal commercials in the 1980s: they would have some ridiculous cartoon mascot and sing a catchy jingle about their sugary cereal treats, and then at the end, they were legally required to say "Part of this balanced breakfast" while displaying a tray laden with fresh fruit, buttered toast, perhaps a glass of orange juice.

https://youtu.be/reLIPoZQZ-8?si=lLXfhsdm89zlOWsI

Those commercials played multiple times a day in my childhood, and they never failed to piss me off, because they clearly demonstrated that "milk and a box of Chex" was not by any means a "balanced breakfast".

[s1artibartfast]

This is the story as old as time. Much of science is good faith, fairly accurate, and nuanced.

Policy and advocacy is deceptive, dishonest, and lacks nuance.

[wathef]

Not sure why you’re being downvoted, this is one of the best takes here. It sits squarely in the realm of evidence where the majority of these comments are anecdotal and they don’t translate to population level studies.

[hollerith]

>The food pyramid put whole grains specifically at the base of the food pyramid. Not sure why you consider this objectionable, the body of evidence overwhelmingly points in the direction of benefits for wholegrain consumption.

Many, many people disagree with that. Most days I eat no grains at all and the rest of the time, I strictly limit my grain intake. For example, I just finished a meal where I used one tablespoonful (uncooked volume) of rice (boiled with some peas). (The meal also included meat and butter, the source of most of my calories.) White rice is the only grain I eat anymore, and I would never eat brown rice, which is loaded with oxalate and other phytotoxins. I added to this just-finished meal B vitamins in the form of pure refined powder (which I liberated from capsules).

It is very obvious from how it makes me feel that brown rice is bad for me.

The cultures that have eaten rice for thousands of years eat almost exclusively white rice. Brown rice was not even possible to make before the spread of tech for precision machining (which reached East Asia in the 1900s). You have to remove the hull from the rice before you can eat it, and before precision machining, removing the hull (traditionally done by pounding the rice with a log) also removed most of the bran and germ. Yes, some bran and some germ remained stuck to the rice -- so it was mostly-white rice, as opposed the polished, completely-white rice we have today with no bran and no germ at all. Still it had only a small fraction of the amount of bran and germ that modern brown rice has.

[KempyKolibri]

I don’t find n=1s to be a good form of evidence. Many people may disagree, but that doesn’t mean they’re right.

Look at the dose response curve for wholegrain consumption in this bad boy (and yes, it’s looking at whole cereal grains, not including fruits and vegetables). Greater consumption associated with better outcomes: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000291652...

[Spagbol]

I've read the opposite; that brown rice is just white rice with the bran still attached, and that white rice was only eaten by the elite because of the additional work required to seperate it (like white bread only being for the wealthy during the middle ages), and that beriberi was a noticed more in times specifically because of industrialization increasing the availability of white rice: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiamine_deficiency Apperently a lot of white rice is now enriched with thiamine for this reason

[hollerith]

>I've read the opposite; that brown rice is just white rice with the bran still attached, and that white rice was only eaten by the elite because of the additional work required to seperate it (like white bread only being for the wealthy during the middle ages)

I've read that, too, many times, and I stopped believing it after I watched videos (on Youtube) of people preparing rice the traditional way. Particularly, I paid close attention to the color of the rice after the processing steps: it was white with bits of brown stuck to it.

I searched for bookmarks for those videos, but cannot find them.

(I don't know about wheat: I only investigated rice.)

[hollerith]

I found the bookmark. Anyone who has ever seen modern brown rice will immediately be able to tell that although there might be bits of bran still stuck to it, this rice has no more than 3 or 4% of the bran of modern brown rice:

https://youtu.be/qGNUPqHvTso?si=WWnY3OLALTBREVMs&t=525

I bookmarked another video, but it has been made private since I watched it.

Here is a very illuminating moment: the rice has already been pounded, then winnowed (the separated hulls removed), but there are still many kernels that need to be hulled (roughly one kernel in every 150 or 200 kernels), so the rice is put back in the mortar for another round of pounding. In other words, although there is more pounding to do to make the rice edible, already most of the bran is off the rice (and thrown away along with the hulls). (When only a few unhulled kernels remain, she removes them one by one with her fingers.) This supports my assertion that it is impossible with traditional methods to get the hulls off while leaving on most or even a significant fraction of the bran. Again: I think you need precision machines that only became available in Europe in the 1800s and in East Asia in the 1900s to get the hulls off (which I think you really need to do if you eat rice every day and want to keep your teeth) while leaving most of the bran on the kernel. I.e., people in traditional rice cultures did not have the ability to consume anywhere close to as much rice bran as is possible by eating modern brown rice.

https://youtu.be/qGNUPqHvTso?si=QWYryq16PBHzK8ed&t=436

[Spagbol]

Interesting, though perhaps it is possible the colour change is due to oxidation? It would be interesting either way to see a nutritional comparison of traditionally prepared and modern brown rice, as well as their bran content