[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?

[tsimionescu]

The first study is saying that it's good to replace butter with either PUFA margarine or TFA margarine. Since we already know from other places that TFAs are actually quite harmful, we know to ignore this study.

We should also learn from history that replacing our diets based on "nutritional science" has generally been unlikely to yield good health results, as long as we're not already obese. For example, nutritional science kept recommending replacing SFA with any UFA, and ended up killing many, many people because it didn't know that trans unsaturated fatty acids are actually worse than SFAs for overall health.

We can reasonably expect that similar things will be discovered in the future about other parts of margarine, and that eating traditional foods with a long history of safe human consumption is a much safer path, be they olive oil or butter or lard.

[EasyMark]

That first study is -tiny- study which is a good data point but hardly worth changing my diet over. I’ve seen plenty of studies saying that butter in moderate usage is just fine, and the war on saturated fats really should have been limited to hydrogenated oils/margarine

[dharma1]

Not a big proponent of saturated fats but dietary LDL has only a modest impact on LDL-c - 5-10%. Other things that have similar or larger impact are exercise, reducing sugar intake, not being overweight, and consuming soluble fibre. Plant sterols/stanols also help

[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.)

[KempyKolibri]

Literally all of them now (in the US and UK at least). Trans fats in industrially produced foods are banned.

[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".