Zoe Harcombe - Olive Oil Can Tap Dance

by Zo Harcombe

Olive Oil Can Tap Dance

Copyright Zo Harcombe 2013

Published by Columbus Publishing Ltd at Smashwords 2013

Epub edition

www.columbuspublishing.co.uk

ISBN 978-1-907797-40-8

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The new American Food Plate was launched on Thursday 2nd June 2011. Here it is or you can see the original on the USDA web site.

Lets start with the positive:

1) Its much easier to understand that the current American Food Pyramid (2005):

This was so complicated (and seemingly needed to be individually tailored), that many people just carried on using the old American Food Pyramid (below introduced 1992), which directed Americans to have: 6-11 grain portions a day; 2-4 fruit portions; 3-5 vegetable portions; 2-3 dairy servings and 2-3 meat/egg/fish/bean/nuts/egg servings per day. Hence Americans could have 26 portions of food a day all having an impact on blood glucose levels. And we wonder why America led the world in getting fat and sick.

MyPlate is served with some advice, as a side dish

Here is the accompanying dietary advice in black; my comments in red alongside:

Balancing Calories

Enjoy your food, but eat less. (Less than what? An anorexic? Less than you are eating now? Less than you need for health?)

Avoid oversized portions. (Requires too much judgement to be useful advice what is oversized to you may not be to me or vice versa. Plus it is very difficult to overeat real food organic meat/fish/eggs/veg it is very easy to overeat processed food. Hence nature sorts out portion sizes for us)

Foods to Increase

Make half your plate fruits and vegetables. (i.e. Fructose & glucose & glucose).

Make at least half your grains whole grains. (there is debate on this in the informed nutritional world whole grains have more nutrients than white grains (still far fewer than quality meat/fish/eggs), but white grains are less abrasive than whole grains and therefore less likely to cause irritable bowel syndrome or bowel cancer. Its all glucose to the body either way).

Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk. (The UK is deficient in vitamins A, D, E and our government doesnt bother recording vitamin K in the National Food Survey, but no doubt we are deficient in all four fat soluble vitamins. I doubt that the USA is any better, so we would be well advised to consume real fats in real food like milk from ruminants freely living on grass. Nature sensibly puts real fat with real fat soluble vitamins in real food. Man stupidly takes them out).

Foods to Reduce

Compare sodium in foods like soup, bread, and frozen meals and choose the foods with lower numbers. (Dont eat anything processed).

Drink water instead of sugary drinks. (Good advice. Better still Dont drink anything processed).

So the new MyPlate is simpler, but does this make it any better Here are my key concerns for Americas national (public) health and for the nutritional advice in this new model

Three national health concerns about MyPlate

1) This will do nothing to solve the obesity epidemic.

I have written 135,000 words on The Obesity Epidemic: What caused it? How can we stop it? In a nutshell we changed our diet advice (America in 1977-1980 and the UK followed suit in 1980-1983) and obesity has increased 10 fold since in the UK; America started from a slightly higher base, so has only increased by a few multiples and not 10! We changed our advice away from Farinaceous and vegetable foods are fattening, and saccharine matters are especially so (Tanner, The Practice of Medicine , 1869) to Base your meals on starchy foods. This has had catastrophic consequences for human weight and health and cataclysmic benefit for the food, drink and drug industries, which profit from us being fat and sick.

MyPlate will do nothing to change this. It is still telling humans to Base your meals on starchy foods instead of realising, as we did for the 3.5 million years before the last 30 years of conventional wisdom, that carbs are uniquely fattening (and unnecessary for human health). Grains are just glucose, fruit is fructose and glucose (a particularly uniquely fattening combination the same as sucrose table sugar), vegetable are glucose (potatoes and starchy vegetables especially so) and dairy (processed yoghurts) and protein foods (beans etc) chosen can also have a carbohydrate content.

2) This will do nothing to solve the nutritional crisis.

We seem to have forgotten why we eat. We eat because there are 13 vitamins and c.16 minerals vital for human existence, let alone health and well being. All the plates and pyramids are obsessed with macro nutrients (fat, protein, carbohydrate); they seem to have forgotten mico nutrients (vitamins & minerals) entirely. Remember that slogan Take care of the pennies/cents and the pounds/dollars look after themselves? This applies nicely to nutrition. Take care of the vitamins and minerals and the fats, protein and carbs will look after themselves.

Our dietary advice should start from how do we get our vitamins and minerals (notwithstanding that the concepts of Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA), let alone Adequate Intake (AI) are a joke as Sally Fallon Morell says Why am I only allowed a certain level of nutrition?!) I did just this in my book The Obesity Epidemic. Ive put three examples (for omnivores, vegetarians and vegans) as an Appendix to this post.