American Elephants

This handsome illustration represents the food pyramid, but it’s the old, outdated food pyramid which you are not supposed to follow anymore.  I have never known anyone who paid any attention whatsoever to the food pyramid, except bureaucrats arguing about what children should be allowed to eat.  Michelle Obama has now joined that group and is busily telling you what your children should eat, and imposing her ideas on the school lunch program, and presumably the school breakfast and dinner program as well. She even brought her personal chef along from Chicago to help out.

Mrs. Obama is enthusiastic about organic food and everyone growing their own little  garden of fresh vegetables.  There is a small French restaurant right next to the place where I get my hair cut, and the proprietor has, in tiny spaces between the paving and in pots, all sorts of fresh herbs growing, though the rosemary has come to dominate everything else, and the figs seem to ripen far too late to ever be eaten. It is, however, a valiant attempt.

Everyone is terribly concerned about childhood obesity.  Australia succumbed to that fad for a while, but realized that it was only a fad, unsupported by science, and dumped the program.

It looks as if childhood obesity in this country is also one of those long-lived fads.  Schools have been measuring children’s Body Mass Index (BMI) and concluding on that basis who is or is not obese. But BMI is not a health measure, was never intended to be a diagnostic tool, and children with BMIs over the arbitrary cut-offs do not necessarily have clinical complications or health risks.  The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) concluded that there is no quality evidence to support that childhood “overweight” or “obesity” is related to health outcomes.

Healthy eating programs to prevent obesity or disease focused on increased fruits and vegetables, or on diets low in fats, sugars or calories for children are not supported.  Nutrition related health problems come from deficiencies brought on by dietary restrictions, overemphasizing certain foods to the exclusion of others, and undereating, not from enjoying all foods and normal eating.

Part of what brought on this subject is that the Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences recommended that the U.S. Department of Agriculture stop participants of the federal Women, Infants and Children program (WIC) from buying potatoes with federal dollars.  The institute also called for the USDA-backed school lunch program to limit use of potatoes.  Under an interim rule, the USDA agreed to bar WIC participants from buying potatoes with their federal dollars.  Potatoes are the only vegetable not allowed.

Jean Daniel, bureaucrat spokeswoman for USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, said the WIC program was updated for the first time in 30 years after “a study” showed more consumption of leafy greens and other veggies was needed. There was no mention of who did the study, what were its parameters, nor its degree of validity, if any.  Simply claiming that something is based on “a study” has no meaning.

The Department of Agriculture has accepted a marketing program that defines “organic” food by a number of processes that a producer of organic food agrees to follow.  Why they have accepted a marketing program is not clear, but the term “organic” means nothing beyond the process used by the grower.  Multiple studies have shown that organic food is not healthier, more nutritious, fresher or better in any way than any other produce.  Its one distinguishing characteristic is that it costs about 30% more.

That program alone makes me fairly cynical about the FDA and the Agricultural Department.  I have read that there are more bureaucrats in the Agriculture Department than there are farms in the country.

This food pyramid, a particularly unattractive illustration, is the new version.  Veggies up, carbohydrates down.  You are supposed to follow this one, until they change their minds again and turn out a new one.  Right now, trans-fats are bad (no evidence), salt bad (no evidence), high fructose corn syrup very bad (no evidence), but that will all change as the food police find new terrors in the American diet.   We are in an age of a kind of preciousness about food.  If we eat just the right things in the right quantities and the right combination, then perhaps we will not die after all.  Life, of course is not sustainable, and a wide variety of foods will do you just fine.  You can’t even believe the statistics on longevity anyway.