Lobbying groups, putting out press releases, claiming victory...
Here's some things you won't find in any of the documents, including the PDFs at the bottom: community gardens, local food, farmers markets, grass fed, free range... Because agribusiness doesn't make money with those.
Just because you might like the results doesn't mean they aren't corrupt as hell
> grass fed, free range... Because agribusiness doesn't make money with those.
Agribusiness absolutely makes money off of those. In fact they had a hilariously easy time adapting to the consumer trend because all they had to do to label a cow “free range” or “grass fed” was change the finishing stage to a lower density configuration instead of those abominable feed lots you see along highways. The first two stages, rearing and pasturing, didn’t change because they were already “free range” and “grass fed”. Half of the farmland in the US is pastureland and leaving animals in the field to eat grass was always the cheapest way to rear and grow them. They only really get fed corn and other food at the end to fatten them up for human consumption.
The dirty not-so-secret is that free range/grass fed cows eat almost the exact same diet as regular cows, they just eat a little more grass because they’re in the field more during finishing. They’re still walking up to troughs of feed, because otherwise the beef would be unpalatable and grow quite slower.
True grass fed beef is generally called “grass finished” beef and it’s unregulated so you won’t find it at a supermarket. They taste gamier and usually have a metallic tang that I quite honestly doubt would ever be very popular. The marbling is also noticeably different and less consistent. Grain finished beef became popular in the 1800s and consumers in the West have strongly preferred it since.
I’m not sure you can even find a cow in the entire world that isn’t “grass fed”. Calves need the grass for their gut microbiomes to develop properly.
> all they had to do to label a cow “free range” or “grass fed” was change the finishing stage to a lower density configuration instead of those abominable feed lots you see along highways.
And this is exactly what people have wanted, and are willing to pay a premium for.
I only vaguely said “the West” because I didn’t want to get into the complexities of subsistence farming, regional quirks, and pedantics like “soybeans hulls are often considered roughage”.
About a third of beef in the world is truly grass finished and two thirds of that is subsistence farmers who can’t afford the grain. Most of the rest comes from Australia, Brazil, and New Zealand because it’s more competitive to leave them in pasture than import the grain.
As much as you may want to hold your nose up at the US, the (vast) majority of beef sold in the world is grain finished and has been for a long time. It’s just more economically competitive and people strongly prefer the taste and texture.
If you want solid evidence you can read a book on the history of animal husbandry. Roman sources include Cato the Elder, Columella, and Varro describe how they used supplemental grains to get cows through the winter and provide oxen enough energy to work (and to feed cavalry which would have been completely impossible without them). Humanity has been feeding grains to cattle for thousands of years, likely prehistorically.
Then in the first half of 1800s a bunch of American farmers with an abundance of corn independently discovered that they could grow bigger cows for slaughter in half the time if they fed them grains instead of roughage like hay or grass. That idea quickly spread to Europe and by the time the green revolution and globalization rolled around in the second half of the 20th century, almost every body started doing it.
This isn’t some new phenomenon. It predates the globalization of agriculture and if you were to ask a random farmer around the world whether they feed their cows a ton of grain they’d look at you like you were asking a very stupid question.
It’d be like asking “do plants need fertilizer?” Yes. If you want to feed the world, yes they do.
You've argued that grain is fed to cattle; which was not in question.
The parent questioned whether the use of grain for finishing was down to a demand based on consumer taste preference.
You've done nothing that would move them from their position of questioning the evidence here.
The detail you do provide shows grain feeding increases yield for farmers, which would be an indicator that it is financial benefit to herd owners that drives the use of grain; potentially moving away from your assertion.
Angus beef is very popular in UK, I'm relatively sure it's grass fed?
That is not at all what the GP was asking because this:
> ...and _people in the USA_ strongly prefer...
Although, I don't know how solid the evidence for even that statement is.
Is completely incoherent in the context of the thread and I just did my best to answer the two words “solid evidence.”
However you make a good point. There is a chicken and egg problem here between consumer taste and farmers optimizing their yield. I don’t have an answer, but I invite you to compare them yourself, if you ever get the chance to eat grass finished beef versus a high end ribeye. Or something like wagyu/kobe where they’re fed almost exclusively rice mash or grains.
As for “angus beef” no that doesn’t mean anything. The US/UK/EU don’t have any meaningful regulations about those marketing terms.
>Is completely incoherent in the context of the thread
Ah, well it seemed cogent and straightforward to me: the OP suggested that your indication that grain feeding was driven by consumer taste preference seemed to lack evidence.
It seems like something that will have been tested (certainly for low-n values), it also seems likely to vary by culture/region substantially.
One of my "if I were in charge" ideas is for origin marks that provide all information about inputs into any product made available for sale. Under sight a system one could look up whether the farmer bought grain feed.
I live in Australia and about half our beef production is apparently grass-finished. I believe what we get in the supermarket is more likely to be grain-finished, but I've definitely bought steaks with the telltale grass-finished yellow fat from Woolworths before. My understanding is that it's more about rainfall and seasonal feed than the particular flavour of one or the other.
For the record, I also think calling grass-fed beef gamey, metallic, and saying it's unlikely to be popular (like the top-level reply did) is an overstatement. The most prominent thing is the different coloured fat. The taste isn't hugely different, probably because our grass-finished beef still gets enough feed.
It's just beef. I go to the supermarket and buy steaks and then I cook them. Sometimes they're finished on grain if the farmer didn't have enough feed, and otherwise they're finished on grass or silage or hay.
I don't understand why you would write something like that in response to a pretty normal discussion. The whole point was that I don't care what feed the beef was finished on.
I appreciate the depth of your responses in this thread. I feel frustrated to see so many nitpicky comments on your responses, but I appreciate that you address them anyway.
One non-nitpicky critique of the parent you replied to: under USDA labeling rules, a product may only be labeled “grass-fed” if the producer can substantiate that cattle were fed a 100% forage diet after weaning. Feeding grain, including corn during finishing, disqualifies the claim. While there is no standalone statute banning grain feeding, labeling grain-fed beef as “grass-fed” would be considered false or misleading and is not permitted by USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service.
In New Zealand dairy herds are routinely fed all sorts of supplemental feed (palm kernel leftover from pressing palm oil, imported from Indonesia is particularly popular, with cows as well as farmers I guess) yet the products are labeled "grass fed" because the cows are kept in bare paddocks with grass underfoot.
The cows have no shade nor shelter from storms and would be much better off in herd homes, but cheapness and very little care for animal welfare
Like I said in a reply to the sibling comment, that’s a regional quirk (taste). Most of the beef exported from NZ to the US goes to meat products like burgers.
Australia is more interesting because it’s 50% grass finished but I could never find a source on how much of that was exported to SEA or US and what products it went to.
Another country that predominantly grass finishes is Brazil but they export mostly to China. Again I couldn’t find a source on how much of exports to the US go to meat products (we source a lot of our hamburger meat and pet food from random countries). I remember in all three cases very little is exported to the EU.
> Like I said in a reply to the sibling comment, that’s a regional quirk (taste
It's a "regional quirk" that applies to far more of the world than US tastes, by my reckoning. Even within the US you'll find plenty of people who don't prefer bland beef, and outside it's just... some parts of Western Europe that share the bland obsession?
Cows and sheep in the UK (and I guess much of Europe) wander round outside all year round and I guess are eating almost entirely grass. You can't go for a walk in the countryside without coming across them constantly. Most of the beef you buy in the shops (not talking about processed foods) is produced in the UK.
> Cows and sheep in the UK (and I guess much of Europe) wander round outside all year round
Probably most of them, but definitely not all of them. https://nltimes.nl/2025/08/18/dairy-cows-netherlands-never-g...: “The total number of dairy cows in the country reached 1.5 million last year. Of these, over 460,000 cows—roughly 31 percent of the national herd—did not spend any time outside“
A factor with cows kept for milking is that you want them to be able to walk to the milking robot at all times, and moving food to where the robot and the cows are can be easier than moving the robot to where the food and the cows are.
Detail in there: during winter, UK livestock are sometimes fed silage, which is grass that has been harvested during the summer and partially fermented. UK is majority local production, but there's significant imports from Ireland.
People talk a lot about water and land use, but if you have the conditions of land that is (a) naturally watered and (b) not flat enough for arable farming, using it for livestock is much more environmentally friendly than, say, feeding them imported soy - leaving only the methane problem.
>You can't go for a walk in the countryside without coming across them constantly.
Next time you see a meat-eater, thank them for their service. If it wasn't for their heroic efforts we'd be overrun with cows, great lumbering beasts wandering around the streets blocking traffic and trampling our gardens.
Here in Scotland its pretty common for cows to be kept off of the fields during winter - a combination of protecting them from the weather and, I suspect more importantly, protecting pasture land. Having cows in a field here at the moment (and I live in the middle of a farm) would probably just result in an ocean of mud.
Dairy in the UK also tastes far better than in the US. British people often comment how hard it is to deal with the dairy in the US which tastes like water in comparison.
Experienced that too, coming from a country that has 100.0% free-range grass-fed cows the beef in the US was pretty dire. Presumably if I'd paid a large amount of money I'd have got something decent but the generic restaurant stuff I've had was what I'd expect from a Ten-dollar-Tuesday meal here.
What he's saying is that the grandparent (top-rated as of this writing) comment claiming that agribusinesses are hiding the benefits of "community gardens, local food, farmers markets, grass fed, free range..." because they don't make money off of them is unfounded.
I personally don't have any insight into the situation and I definitely don't want to defend big businesses, I'm just explaining what you're replying to.
>Agribusiness absolutely makes money off of those.
I took the heart of their point to be about local food infrastructure and co-ops and farmers markets, and the grass fed bring cited insofar as it was complementary to those.
You rightly note that "grass fed" beef is effectively the same as "made with* real cheese", technically true even if it's in the parts per millions, and not at all a signal of authenticity it might seem to be at first glance. But I feel like this is all a detour from their point about local food infrastructure.
> all they had to do to label a cow “free range” or “grass fed” was change the finishing stage to a lower density configuration instead of those abominable feed lots you see along highways.
This is a material win for humane treatment of animals as well as the health of the consumers who aren't eating the stress hormones of a tortured large mammal. The price difference isn't even that big. Of all the things to complain about in the meat industry, this is not top of mind in my opinion.
> Here's some things you won't find in any of the documents, including the PDFs at the bottom: community gardens, local food, farmers markets, grass fed, free range... Because agribusiness doesn't make money with those.
Are those relevant to addressing America's national diet deficiencies? None of them are currently anywhere big enough to make a practical difference to most people.
Also most of the health problems with what people eat are from what foods they eat and how much they eat rather than from not choosing the highest quality of those particular foods. E.g., someone might snack often on candy. If they can be convinced to switch to snacking on fruit it doesn't really matter much if they get that fruit from Safeway or a farmer's market. Maybe the farmer's market fruit is healthier for them than the Safeway fruit but the difference will be tiny compared to the gains from switching from candy to fruit.
The point is with many hundreds of pages maybe there could have been something like
"local farmers markets have shown to address concerns about food deserts especially in lower income communities" or some obvious non-controversial observation. Maybe "community gardens have been demonstrated to increase lifespan in multiple studies"
The point is these things are decided on by a committee. To find out where their priorities are one of the bigger tells is when you find really obvious things that are not there.
If this was a sincere effort, where is all the obvious stuff?
I think it's less about that farmer's market produce being healthier, and more about it being tastier. I've encountered plenty of people saying things like "I don't like tomatoes" when it turns out all they've eaten are pale, out-of-season tomatoes from the supermarket.
A big part of getting people to eat better is educating them about seasonality and what good produce should taste like, so that they end up actually liking it.
A farm by our cottage had a sign out last year, selling vegetables. We bought some cauliflower and had it for dinner. It was supposed to be a side dish but it was so darn good I don't even remember the main dish.
Later I got some vegetables from a friend who had grown them at a local allotment garden. Made some vegetable soup with them and I swear it's one of the best meals I've had, and I've had some real nice meals.
Flavor in each case was so far beyond what I can get in the grocery stores here it's hardly comparable.
A lot of it comes down to what the person you're responding to said, seasonality. I grew up in a very rural farming area and now live in a very large city. While the produce at the grocery store is generally inferior to that of being near a farm, when things are in season, it is at least comparable. That apple you buy in July is never going to be as good as one bought in the fall, it doesn't matter where you buy it from.
No reason to believe their numbers either given the shenanigans they have engaged in.
We need to be smart and not knee jerk into feel good memes though. Local gardens and community gardens have higher resource use per acre than large farm ops. Commercial farm infrastructure is far more resilient and lasts longer while consumer gardening gear is cheap and disposable. Consumer gardening gear manufacturers factories burn tons of resources to crank out tons of low quality kit, consumers burn through piles of it. That's not sustainable either.
Plus you really want the average American dumping chemicals in community ground water to grow the biggest pumpkin in the zip code?
Americans need to find common ground on the path forward not fragment into tens of millions of little resource intensive potato farmers
> Plus you really want the average American dumping chemicals in community ground water to grow the biggest pumpkin in the zip code?
Just because it’s out of sight doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Industrial farming and specially animal farming is one of the most polluting industries, subsidized to produce environmental damage, population diseases and animal abuse.
The value of smaller gardens are not measured in the produce harvested but the knowledge sowed. Many are federally funded at schools, community centers, or local libraries to serve as outdoor classrooms.
> The value of smaller gardens are not measured in the produce harvested but the knowledge sowed
No, it should be measured in terms of amount of input relative to the amount of output. It’s almost never the case that small farms is going to be more efficient—not only cost wise, but for the environment—than large scale farming.
> It’s almost never the case that small farms is going to be more efficient—not only cost wise, but for the environment—than large scale farming.
I can relate: Our SIL gave my wife a countertop gadget that holds six little cups into which you drop pre-packaged paper cups of seeds and soil. (You order them online.) The gadget has a grow light. You have to water the cups periodically My ux uses the gadget to grow basil and parsley, and snips off bits of leaves as needed for cooking. All-in, the crops cost probably 5-10X what we'd pay for fresh herbs at a Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, let alone at an Aldi's or H-E-B. Ah, well: Signaling love and appreciation is important ....
They can help educate a nation on which are the healthiest foods to eat, how to prepare them, what they taste like, etc. That may allow us to more healthily feed a nation 100%, while also using fewer resources.
Been doing it the same way for centuries so, care to elaborate on what's wrong with how they farm?
Also, just because their setup isn't optimal, doesn't mean it's the cause for some ecological crisis like you seem to be implying. I live in Japan, I watch people farm every year, there is very little going on that makes me suspect there is some wide-spread ecological damage being done by people who want to grow massive pumpkins, even though, people do grow massive pumpkins.
You telling everyone that gardening is bad for the environment is interesting because I absolutely cannot imagine what is worse for the environment than the industrial scale monocrop style farming that goes on most developed countries. Like, holy shit...
People need to eat and industrial scale farming is what enables us to make enough, affordable food.
It has plenty downsides. But it’s a brilliant and truly efficient system that is being perfected by thousands of scientists and it has prevented hunger and chaos for decades now.
If you want to see real change, people would need to have way more time, be less lazy, have more money and be less demanding when it comes to variety and availability.
In other words, it’s easier to keep perfecting the system we have because it’s easier to change procedures than it is to change people.
Didn't say we can do away with Industrial scale farming, just that I live in a part of Japan where people grow so much of their own food, they struggle to give it away by the end of the summer. So yeah, didn't mean to imply industrial scale farming is "naughty", just that Japan is notorious for smaller farming operations and I've seen a lot of food grown successfully here at small or micro scale. I think a healthy mix of both things is important.
Look at Australia, basically no one grows any food and they're completely at the mercy of insanely inflated food prices dictated by corporations like Woolworths. At least in rural parts of Japan, a lot of people can lower their grocery costs with supplemental, home grown food. I actually have notice a bit of a rebellious culture amongst farmers here. It's interesting but for a different topic I guess.
Commercial farm infrastructure is far more resilient and lasts longer while consumer gardening gear is cheap and disposable. Consumer gardening gear manufacturers factories burn tons of resources to crank out tons of low quality kit, consumers burn through piles of it. That's not sustainable either.
You seem to be implying that people gardening are doing a disservice to the environment because we're buying disposable gardening tools (not true). I've had plenty of gardening tools for decades, I even use tools handed down from previous generations. I bet tractor tires aren't great for the environment either?
The rice shortages were not because of poor farming practices, this is basic knowledge now: https://eastasiaforum.org/2024/10/18/japans-rice-crisis-show.... Yes the weather was bad in 2023 for farming rice, but it could be bad anywhere in the world. Australia does plenty of industrial scal farming and there are years were certain crops are decimated.
Anyway the government dipped into the stockpiles and all is good now.
It's as if you didn't read the article - this is just the summary they give:
> Japan faced a rice shortage in the summer of 2024, exposing flaws in its food security policy. Despite declining consumption, small shocks caused market disruption. The government refused to release stockpiles, prioritising producer interests over consumer needs. This reflects political considerations, with upcoming elections influencing policy decisions. The crisis highlights the need for a more balanced approach to food security, emphasising both physical stockpiles and effective public communication. Japan must reassess its agricultural policies to ensure long-term food security and market stability.
The actual meat of the article goes in to further, damning detail.
If you think I'm a Democrat or part of any party, you don't know me.
I'm virulently anti-tribalistic and it's hurt me professionally, socially and romantically my whole life. Trust me, I've got nobody. It's a big problem.
So yeah, the tribal claim, that's just you. You're just talking about yourself
> “Goshdangit why did arbiter of change get lobbied by [tangential cartel]?”
I don’t think it’s a good take, although I won’t go so far as to accuse you of political bias. It’s not like the guidelines say to eat Tyson-branded chicken; Let’s not complain about positive progress.
You know what got the flawed food pyramid created? Lobbying by Seventh Day Adventists. That did not get enough outrage as it hurt countless people in ways that are difficult to quantify. They made fat and meat the enemy across the country because of their religious beliefs. They paid off researchers and even had one claim that Coca Cola was healthier than steak.
Let’s focus on forward progress and not how we got there.
I'm thousands of miles outside the US sitting firmly in the center watching left and right be at each other's throats over absolutely everything so maybe we're kind of alike.
This could certainly be fantastic, and very good advice. Or it could be a lot of bunk, I don't know. Given the source (i.e., RFK), I refuse to trust it.
The point of guidance like this is to be trustworthy and authoritative. If I have the ability to independently evaluate it myself, then I didn't really need it in the first place.
Of course, I might be mistaken to have ever trusted the government's nutrition guidance. It's not like undue influence from industry lobbying is unique to this administration.
>> If I have the ability to independently evaluate it myself, then I didn't really need it in the first place.
At what point in time was the government's guidance ever to be accepted on blind faith without critical evaluation? Take this input, compare with data on the same topic from other positions that are far from the source and make up your own mind.
If the government's guidance isn't to be at least mostly trusted, then I'm not sure the government should be offering guidance at all. (Which is perhaps a sensible position in itself.)
In other words, if I learn enough about nutrition to be able to critically evaluate the government's guidance, then is that guidance adding any additional signal? At that point, I should just rely on my sources about nutrition.
I've never been one to rely on official guidance blindly. For example I don't show up to the airport two hours early, and cheerfully laugh at advice that I should. But I'd like to believe that this guidance is better than total nonsense.
This is really just bothsidesism. In reality there are fundamental differences between groups in the way that people evaluate events, evidence, even their own party's questionable actions. Papering it over with by claiming criticism is all just mindless tribalism just serves to excuse those with the worst behavior. In this specific case, government food policy has been drastically changed to suit the peculiar ideology of one man, with no public hearings, no debate, and no scientific consensus. Is it not appropriate to be skeptical, regardless of one's "tribe"??
There are a number of lies and omissions here, as there have been from just about every administration due to agribusiness lobbying.
You're playing the tribalism game by setting up this strawman, you too are being played.
I'd personally be just as critical towards anyone who claimed they were fighting a "war on protein" that plainly doesn't exist. Americans consume more meat per capita than nearly any other country.
meat != protein, that's just where we've historically gotten most of it. Even meat != meat; it's totally acceptable to read & accept "eat more protein" and then figure out how you're going to get it within your tolerances for fat, sugar, environmental impact, economics, etc.
I scrolled past the intro on the website and got to the very first mention of protein, where it is pictured as the foundation of the "new pyramid". The literal very first long form text that appears after that graphic is as follows:
> We are ending the war on protein. Every meal must prioritize high-quality, nutrient-dense protein from both animal and plant sources, paired with healthy fats from whole foods such as eggs, seafood, meats, full-fat dairy, nuts, seeds, olives, and avocados.
I'm not about to go count all the mentions and provide an exact answer to your question, because this website appears to be saying things that I already know and have been living by for years; it has no value to me personally. But the initial call to eat more protein specifically says "both animal and plant sources".
If the actions and beliefs of a group are fundamentally morally repugnant to me, I think that it is reasonable to not expect me to be able to find "something positive" in it. We are not amoral automata with grocery-list style utility functions.
I have people in my personal sphere that make this sort of argument and it honestly feels like gaslighting. The undercurrent is: "Look, you don't like this guy, I get it. But if you can't see that he does some good, then you are the one who is irrational and not really in a sound state of mind." Meanwhile completely preventable, life-threatening, life-destroying diseases such as measles are back because of the obscurantist beliefs that come with this "new refreshing outlook". This is a bit like saying: "look, you can say what you want about the Spanish inquisition but they kept rates of extra-marital affairs down."
Corporations love this sort of feel-good campaign (the same way they love performative LGBTQ / feminism / diversity when the culture wars swing the other way) for two main reasons: (1) they distract from fundamental issues that threaten their real interests; (2) they shift the blame on big societal issues completely to the public. They do this with climate change, they do it with increase of wealth inequality and they most certainly do it with public health.
All developed nations have a problem with processed food. Granted, it is particularly severe in the USA, but the ONE THING that separates the USA from almost every other developed nation in our planet is the absence of socialized healthcare. This is the obvious salient thing to look at before all others, so also obviously, a lot of money will be spent to misdirect and distract from this very topic.
>If the actions and beliefs of a group are fundamentally morally repugnant to me,
sure, although if tribal differences are always experienced as fundamentally morally repugnant one might think the moral calibration is screwed a bit too tight.
>I think that it is reasonable to not expect me to be able to find "something positive" in it.
Sure, I do think it is possible that some groups are so morally repugnant that they have absolutely nothing to offer whatsoever. For example that tribe of cave dwelling cannibals in the film The 13th Warrior, man those guys sucked! But the comment seemed more to be about how it is weird that when you find some group does some things that you find morally repugnant then they have nothing they do that can ever be good.
I have lived in places in which I find much of the surrounding culture to have behaviors that I found morally repugnant, or intellectually repugnant for that matter, but even at my most contemptuous of a culture and a people I will at times be forced to admit, honestly, that they have behaviors that can also be considered admirable (in many cultures the repugnant bits are so tightly bound to the admirable bits though I can see how it is difficult not to condemn everything)
> sure, although if tribal differences are always experienced as fundamentally morally repugnant one might think the moral calibration is screwed a bit too tight.
They're not always experienced this way. But that's the trend in America.
> but even at my most contemptuous of a culture and a people I will at times be forced to admit, honestly, that they have behaviors that can also be considered admirable
Ya, I think it's something along the lines of "even a broken clock is right twice a day".
Do I need to give out a cookie when the clock tells me the correct time if it's fucking me on the time the rest of the day?
Even a developmentally disabled human tends to be significantly more complex than a stopped clock so the analogy doesn't work well.
if anything it is more than a computer with a lousy video and sound card, you don't use it for games or streaming movies or most things, but due to some other things (which I am not going to take the time to create a plausible scenario why this should be) the computer is actually really superior as a server, so you have set it up for that. Do you give out a cookie for the computer that works really well at serving content over port 80 despite it sucks for anything you enjoy?
> Even a developmentally disabled human tends to be significantly more complex than a stopped clock so the analogy doesn't work well.
I think it works perfectly, honestly. Maybe moreso after the above statement.
> Do you give out a cookie for the computer that works really well at serving content over port 80 despite it sucks for anything you enjoy?
No, I do not. Nor does the server ask for a cookie. It just does its job consistently without making a fuss. If governments could do that bare minimum thing, the world would be a better place.
> If the actions and beliefs of a group are fundamentally morally repugnant to me, I think that it is reasonable to not expect me to be able to find "something positive" in it.
I'm not sure you appreciate how symmetrical this statement is. You are on Team A, saying it about Team B, but nothing in the statement actually depends on that permutation of teams -- it could be equally compellingly said by a Team B member about Team A.
> If the actions and beliefs of a group are fundamentally morally repugnant to me, I think that it is reasonable to not expect me to be able to find "something positive" in it.
No it isn't reasonable. In fact it is one of the stupidest things you can do. If you read any history, you will see that failures in military, politics, science etc. (really pick anything) are often due to key people simply refusing to learn from their opponents and/or refusing to adjust to the new reality. Often this is done because they find their opponents morally repugnant, or lacking in some virtue they happen to hold as important.
It is fine if you don't like the current US Administration. However if they do something that happens to be good, it is fine to acknowledge it as such, while still pointing out what else they are doing wrong. Otherwise you just come off as a sore loser and people will stop taking any notice of you.
I think this is true, and the broad sense of that website is an improvement on what went before, so we should acknowledge that. But it's also right that people point out the moralising tone and connect other administration actions and policies with an assessment of whether these principles will be backed by policies that actually make any difference in real life. My suspicion is that this will be part of an effort to further stigmatise people damaged by the industrial food industry without doing anything to make healthy food cheaper or more accessible, but I'd love to be wrong!
That is misinformation. Very few developed nations have socialized healthcare. Many of them do better in terms of universal coverage and cost control but they don't have a single-payer system or force healthcare providers to be government employees. For examples see Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, Israel, etc.
Those diseases are back because of rampant immigration. People from other countries bring them here. It has nothing to do with "obscurantist beliefs", whatever those might be.
Bingo. It’s pretty annoying. My tribe can do no wrong (in fact my tribe will freely point out its faults because again, it can do no wrong). Anything from the other tribe isn’t just wrong, it’s evil and all that is wrong with everything. Those guys are Neanderthals, not even worthy of telling the time to. My tribe is incredibly smart and gifted. We can do no wrong!
Unfortunately the only way to opt out is to basically stop participating at all. No more consumption of tribal news media and since most news media is incredibly tribal (even saying it’s not tribal is in fact tribal)… it basically means no more news media consumption. Which makes you uninformed instead of merely misinformed.
I dunno the solution to this. It’s a complex web of everybody playing to their incentives including the algorithms that aggregate things for consumption.
Again though, I’ll firmly emphasize that it is the other tribe that is wrong. My tribe isn’t biased or hateful or outrage driven. We say we aren’t so clearly it’s not possible.
Trite, yes, but personally I'd argue that accusing people of intellectual dishonesty (i.e. bad faith) is by definition unfalsifiable and therefore unproductive. Always.
I don't agree that it is either unfalsifiable or unproductive. And even if it is unfalsifiable, it's not "by definition"--so often that phrase is misused to add an aura of authority, but there's no tautology here. I find your claims to be self-reflectively unproductive and erroneous.
(I would note that, strictly speaking, my statement is provably false (therefore falsifiable) since by definition nothing can be at setting 11 on an implied scale of 1-10.)
I also take issue with "I'd argue" ... so often that phrase is misused to characterize an assertion with no accompanying argumentation.
Further discussion is unlikely to be productive so I won't comment further.
Comments noted but I always choose my words carefully. The accusation of bad faith is definitionally unfalsifiable. It makes a claim about intention, which - by definition - nobody but the speaker can know.
You seriously don't know what a definition is ... care isn't adequate in the presence of incompetence. Intentions can be inferred ... it's done all the time (and bad faith is not strictly a matter of intention--people can argue in bad faith without a conscious intention of doing so). I've seen this pedantic epistemologically absurd to the point of bad faith argument so many times--"knowing" is not the standard that anyone actually uses for justification of claims--even the common but quite flawed philosophical definition of knowledge as "true justified belief" recognizes that one only needs justified belief, not knowledge--only via god's eye can it be certified that such beliefs are true. And of course Popper's falsifiability does not depend on "knowing" at the epistemic extreme ... again, this is incompetence.
Enough ... now I'm really going silent no matter how much you goad me.
Arguing with someone who is intellectually dishonest is also usually unproductive (unless you know what you're doing and want to convince bystanders). So it's more of a tie.
Or the current man in control of Health and Human Services is at best saying nothing of value. (At worst, he's sidelining vaccines for multiple infectious diseases, but that's off topic)
It would be pretty weird if they were so broken they were incapable of saying anything right, even at times when they were trying to be ingratiating. You'd have to be astonishingly insane, more even than these people are, to be totally unable to identify something that would be good press.
I'm not saying they can't reach that point, but this ain't it. They are just getting details wildly wrong and being generally obtuse, but this is an attempt at not seeming completely insane and should be graded on that curve. You can't expect every little detail to be insane, that's asking a lot.
I was surprised how impressed I was by the website. The layout, design, focus on simple foods.
I think the person above may just feel skeptical of the scientific and medical opinion of most of the people running the US government. I know I do. When I read "gold-standard science and common sense," I rolled my eyes. Because the previous news cycle said they don't think meningitis vaccines are important for kids, yet say they follow gold-standard science. It's hard for me to reconcile the two.
EDIT: "rooted in...personal responsibility."
"America is sick.
The data is clear.
50% of Americans have prediabetes or diabetes
75% of adults report having at least one chronic condition
90% of U.S. healthcare spending goes to treating chronic disease—much of which is linked to diet and lifestyle."
It also has this moralizing tone, and seems to make some pretty bold claims about why Americans have prediabetes or diabetes. For example, with the introduction of GLP-1 drugs, like Ozempic, people (including some I know well) have significantly reduced their diabetic risk. And they're still eating the same processed foods.
Also, "linked to diet and lifestyle" is a pretty broad claim. Maybe the undersleeping and overcaffeinating actually matters more for increased appetite and desire to eat less healthy foods.
In short, I just don't trust many people when they say health is so inextricably and exclusively tied to food source, especially when they tend to think most vaccines are net negatives for individuals and society.
The website is good information, and if it came from a NPO is would be great... But the US government has so much power (and responsibility) to protect the US consumers from the food industry.
- Ban some of the ingredients like they did for trans fat
- Force better labeling, like the Nutri-Score in France and EU
- Tax the more unhealthy choices so they don't become the cheapest solution - and maybe use that tax money to subsidize healthier alternatives
This site looks like they're just shaming the consumers for falling for the tricks the government allows the food industry to pull off.
I remember a European MEP who was fighting the food industry to impose Nutri-Score saying on TV that no constituent comes to them saying "help me, I'm too fat". However many expect politicians to boost the job market. The food industry knows that, so each time you try to impose some regulation they'll say "if you do that, we're be forced to do so many layoffs!"
> - Force better labeling, like the Nutri-Score in France and EU
NutriScore is mostly useless, to the point of being misleading. The system was cooked up by the industry, which explains a lot.
It is a label that tells you how nutritious a given product is "compared to products in the same category". So you could have, say, candy or frozen pizza with a NutriScore A and that would be just fine according to this system because it happens to be more nutritious than other candy/pizza. In other words, a product having a NutriScore of A doesn't mean the product is actually healthy or good for you.
I’m in Colombia right now and they actually have a great food labeling system. It just warns you if a product contains too much sugar, salt, additives etc, without trying to score. Whereas the European labels give you a false sense that everything is nutritious.
Who or what defines what is "too much" of any ingredient? Isn't that a scoring system too?
European NutriScore "assigns products a rating letter from A (best) to E (worst), with associated colors from green to red. High content of fruits and vegetables, fibers, protein and healthy oils (rapeseed, walnut and olive oils) per 100 g of food product promote a preferable score, while high content of energy, sugar, saturated fatty acids, and sodium per 100 g promote a detrimental score." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutri-Score
That sounds useful. Consumers most likely choose the food they want to eat by type, being able to spot the healthier options within a category sounds like it would help me in the supermarket.
We have a traffic light system, pretty useful. But when all items in a category are bad for you, and you know it, them all having red lights doesn't help much.
I'd certainly try alternatives that are marginally healthier, if that's true generally then it puts some pressure on food industry to move to healthier choices.
this is clearly a net loss for public health in general, politics aside. Having alcohol in dietary guidelines (without even stating a drink limit) is positively idiotic.
Personally I don't care either way about RFK Jr's new food pyramid.
I think the bigger danger of giving this credit is lending any legitimacy to RFK Jr who is actively undermining actual medical advice and wrecking havoc on our childhood vaccine programs.
Just because a broken clock is right twice a day, doesn't mean you need to give the broken clock credit for being right.
By doing this "oh it's just tribalism" lends legitimacy to RFK Jr and furthers his ability to kill kids with preventable disease and further damage the credibility of modern medical science.
"Oh he has some good ideas" Yeah? Which ones? Does the average american have the time/curiosity/capability to sort through which of his ideas are good and which ones will kill their kids?
Why should we read any of his books? He doesn't believe in infectious disease. That shows he has no understanding of how things work, if he gets something right it's a stopped clock situation. You learn nothing from looking at a stopped clock even though it's occasionally right.
Tell me, which of the following books should I read? Should I start on the silly anthony fauci attack book? or the book on vaccines by the man who isn't a doctor?
The Riverkeepers: Two Activists Fight to Reclaim Our Environment as a Basic Human Right
Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy
Saint Francis of Assisi: A Life of Joy
American Heroes: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the
American Civil War
Robert Smalls: American Hero
Framed: Why Michael Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison for a Murder He Didn’t Commit
American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family
The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health
A Letter to Liberals: Censorship and COVID: An Attack on Science and American Ideals
Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak
The Wuhan Cover-Up: And the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race
because they're a source of local, sustainable, seasonal, and healthy food that isn't peddled by agribusiness lobbies — grassfed beef specifically is leaner, lower in calories, and richer in beneficial nutrients
So the animal rights and environmental groups are upset that health targets are prioritizing health over mudding the waters with these other agendas? If those are worthy goals on their own then fine, but stop trying to suggest that we can't improve health drastically and more effectively by making simple and clear recommendations to move away form processed food.
The new guidelines prioritize meat and dairy above all else, which comes with well known health issues, especially at the rate Americans consume them.
There's already plenty of evidence (victory lap press releases from the respective industries) that indicate that this was accomplished due to lobbying... so we haven't moved at all: the old recommendations were imperfect and fueled by specific industry preference, and the new ones do the same.
> we can't improve health drastically and more effectively by making simple and clear recommendations to move away form processed food.
pretty much every nutritionist has been urging a reduction in processed foods for years now, the solution isn't to replace processed foods with meat and dairy... that's just a different problem
What are the "well known health issues"? I have seen some low-quality observational studies (junk science) which show some weak correlation between consumption of animal products and negative health outcomes but so far nothing conclusive one way or the other.
you've got to find better sources than a health coach selling a subscription program that benefits from this take, that post is indistinguishable from spam
> Unprocessed and processed red meat consumption are both associated with higher risk of CVD, CVD subtypes, and diabetes, with a stronger association in western settings but no sex difference.
but it does matter, why not subsidize local produce instead of factory-farmed meat? if we just wave away "it's too expensive" as some natural state (which it's not, it's shaped by the government) then nothing ever improves
we need to ask why people can't afford what's arguably better for the environment and the workers producing it
When I saw that protein target, I knew there must be shenanigans… 0.5-0.7g per pound is within the range that BODY BUILDERS target for maximum hypertrophy (1g/lb is a myth that wastes peoples money). Eating 4-5 chicken breasts per day is ridiculous for a normal person.
1g/lb is in fact a popular target among bodybuilders.
Much research indicates 0.5 to 0.7 g/lb provides most of the benefits, with continuing but diminishing gains above 0.7 g/lb. And the benefit is not just for "body building", but also for minimizing muscle loss during weight loss and improving insulin sensitivity. Other research indicates we may benefit from higher levels as we age.
I am not sure if you're disagreeing with the original poster here but you're both saying the same thing in different units. 1g/kg != 1g/lb which is A LOT more protein and a complete waste of time. As a mostly vegetarian who lifts regularly, I am targeting a bit more than 1g/kg but being from the US it is a lot less than 1g/lb. :p
Wait, what? I lift weights and chicken breast is a fundamental part of my diet but I'm eating 1/3 to 1/2 a single chicken breast a day, and an egg for breakfast. That CAN'T be right.
I get that I include some rice, peanuts etc. in there, but even if I quit EVERYTHING else there's no way 4 to 5 chicken breasts a day is accurate.
>Eating real food means choosing foods that are whole or minimally processed and recognizable as food. These foods are prepared with few ingredients and without added sugars, industrial oils, artificial flavors, or preservatives.
Meh, I would note that the Tyson-supported definition of "real chicken" is not one without antibiotics and growth hormones, let alone a free-range heritage breed. This would have been the standard for a "real chicken" a few human generations ago.
I was wondering why meat and veg were side by side, rather than vegetables being at the base. The new pyramid is still better than the old one, but not completely intellectually honest...
I'm not zdc1, but they may be referring to the previous advice that included more grains than fruit and veg combined. From a design perspective, it is an interesting choice to mix food groups on the same level of the pyramid.
> previous advice that included more grains than fruit and veg combined
I have not seen the pyramid with bread, cereal, rice and pasta at the base pushed for at least ~20 years. Maybe it was 25-30 years ago when I saw it pushed seriously in school and even then I did not see people taking it seriously outside of those lessons, as in people actively calling it questionable.
Ahh. Maybe because I'm AU-based millennial, but the only "food pyramid" I was aware of was the grains-heavy 90s one that I would randomly see here and there, so that was my point of reference.
> A person is most likely to see a food pyramid poster in an elementary or middle school classroom, cafeteria, or hallway, where it was commonly displayed as an educational tool during the 1990s and 2000s to teach nutrition.
the first one was in 1982 or something, so you have nearly 3 whole generations who were exposed to it (X, Millennial, and Z). I really can't tell if you're actually incredulous; because all the nutrition stuff is told to schoolchildren. Adults don't use a chart, they use self-help books.
Yeah, but 2000 was 25 years ago. There's multiple generations who haven't been exposed to it, so this is not replacing the food pyramid, it's replacing what replaced the food pyramid.
only 1 generation has completely escaped the one from "25 years ago" - Alpha; and another generation is incoming; and if the new poster sticks around, a couple of generations will see the new one, too.
you're correct, my eyesight gets worse as the day goes on and i saw the second "9" as an 8. that only partially reduces the impact from my claim of X, Millennial, Zoomer; as i am gen X and i was still in "middle school" when the food pyramid came out, and my millennial sister assuredly was. the older Gen X (from the early 1970s) may or may not remember (as in an only child and childless until after the poster was no longer used) this from their younger years in classrooms.
My main point was (i think!) that really the only people seeing these posters on a regular basis are schoolchildren. I think i've seen the pyramid a dozen times in the last 20 years, on cereal boxes or websites or whatever, but if you don't recognize it, it's easily written off. Maslow also had a pyramid, etc.
I would be interested in knowing what cereal box you saw it on or where you saw it promoted seriously in the last 20 years.
In the late 90s I was in high school in a town with less that 80k people in the middle of the congenital USA and the pyramid with bread, cereal, rice and pasta at the base was not seriously pushed, or taken seriously, at school or when it came up outside of school.
The incentives are wrong. Any good policy for bad incentives is temporary and incidental
This policy selectively emphasizes the most difficult to import foods so it also plays into isolationist nativist policies.
If you think meat lobbying groups just wanted a new triangle and this isn't going to extend to water, land, energy, and environmental policies along with farm subsidies and even merger&acquisition and liability policies, sorry ...
This thing is for them, their profitability and their investors. They didn't lobby on behalf of your personal health...
Open a position on the MOO ETF. I just did. Might as well make some money from it
Sure. What about the public citizen efforts for crumple zone and seat belts in the 1960s?
Or are you saying bad incentives, good long term outcomes?
Maybe Napoleon's rework of Paris? That was done to control public dissidents but it also made it a beautiful city.
Mass timekeeping? Those were adopted for industrial labor... Seems to be quite useful
Joint stock ownership was I think invented for the slave trade but that's proven to be generally useful.
I think magnetic audio tape was made practical for a deceitful technique by the Nazis for claiming to be broadcasting live on the radio after they had fled...
In each of these instances though the thing long outlived the initial user
Is it? The change in recommendation is to have less veggies in favor of more meat. From all the recent research and meta studies I've seen it doesn't track.
It's still decent a guidance, but the previous one was as well.
The first food group listed is literally meat and dairy. The ordering here is purposeful, too, as they admit. One promo graphic includes a block of butter and a carton explicitly labelled "whole milk." This is a very definite downgrade.
The relationship between dairy/meat and inflammation is more nuanced than that. While some studies show associations with inflammatory markers, others find neutral or even anti-inflammatory effects depending on the type (e.g., grass-fed vs grain-fed, fermented vs non-fermented dairy) and individual metabolic context.
You're right that ratios matter enormously, but optimal ratios vary significantly by individual - genetics, activity level, metabolic health, and existing conditions all play roles. The overconsumption concern is valid for processed meats and in the context of sedentary lifestyles with excess calories, but the picture is less clear for whole-food animal proteins in balanced diets.
The real issue might be less about meat/dairy per se and more about displacement of other beneficial foods (fiber, polyphenols, etc) and overall dietary patterns. Many Americans do overconsume calories generally, but some subpopulations (elderly, athletes, those on restricted diets) may actually benefit from more protein.
why is meat inflammatory? is it they way it's farmed/raised?
because we have teeth specifically designed to get meat off bones and animals that don't eat meat and weren't "designed to" don't have teeth designed to clean meat off bones. and that's just one i came up with, off the cuff.
if it's current farming practices that make the meat/dairy bad for us, then fix that. But i don't currently believe there's a greater health benefit to taking a ton of supplements to replace the missing nutrients that meat and dairy give us that you absolutely cannot get from vegan diets without it becoming a monotonous pain in the neck.
> why is meat inflammatory? is it they way it's farmed/raised?
Not all meats are inflammatory. Processed and high temp cooked meats especially red are.
And I don't think we have the answer fully to why, but we know the lesser processed it is the better, and I believe I've seen some things about grass fed and all these more organically/traditional made meats seem to not be as inflammatory.
Also, we evolved during a period where we hunted, so even the idea of farmed meet maybe isn't really part of our evolution. But also, during our hunting evolution, we likely didn't have meat at every meals. Plus if you ever had game meat, it tastes really different and often isn't as good as what we farmed. So we kind of came to farm what tasted the best and was easy to farm, so it might be those meats aren't as good for us.
Also, you can't always assume that the environment we evolved in and the "natural" state is good for us. It wasn't bad enough for us to dwindle in numbers, but our population count was kept much lower than now and our life expectancies were shorter. As long as we made it to a healthy reproduction state evolution doesn't care. So all these inflammatory issues appear starting in your 30s and really become a problem much later in life. It's possible this didn't matter in evolutionary terms.
Lastly, you also have to take into context what else we'd do/eat. If our diets were more balanced than other things we would eat could neutralize some of that inflammation and meat has other vitamins and nutrients that are benefitial, but if someone cuts those other things out of their diet now the inflammation could become a problem.
Good stuff here. To add to your point: atherosclerosis actually begins development as early as childhood, but you only suffer 40 or 50 years down the line once you're hit with a stroke or a heart attack. Evolution didn't act on this!
Some herbivores too have huge canines[0] for territorial fights. I used to use mine to fight my brother but now I'm settled they only help tearing appart coconut, cowliflower and seitan.
You can get all the nutrients you need, easily, from a vegan diet, with the exception of B12 (a cheap supplement will cover that).
Also, human ‘canines’ are pretty pathetic. They’ll do the job in getting meat off bones, sure, but are nothing compared with my dog’s teeth – he has proper canines. (He also doesn’t have to prepare and cook meat before tucking in. Humans are actually pretty lame meat eaters even in comparison to other omnivores like dogs, let alone carnivores like lions.)
vitamin D? unless you live within 10 degrees of the equator "the sun" is not a valid answer.
The most available form of vitamin D comes from extracting the oil from sheep's wool/skin using chemicals (soap is a chemical, for the record.) Yes, it is possible to get a much weaker form of D from mushrooms, but not as they arrive, regardless of packaging. they have to be left outside in the sun for at least 8 hours, but ideally "two full days in the sun", cap-side up (facing the sun), and then a standard mushroom will have enough D2 for the average adult, maybe. I don't know the specific conversion from D2 to calciferol or whatever.
And before anyone decides to cite 30ng/ml or whatever as "recommended", i disagree, 90-105ng/ml is more "ideal" and 500IU of vitamin D supplements aren't going to cut it. it's 1 IU per 10 grams of body mass (roughly).
i can do this all day, it's a waste of both of our time. As lovely as vegetarian/veganism is in the abstract, the entire planet cannot be vegan any more than the entire planet can subsist off insects.
My vegan diet involves a lot of beans, rice, ..., which all require considerably less input than meat does. A bag of beans costs so very little, lasts so long, and is healthy. Meat and dairy are luxuries that come at the cost of pretty horrific treatment for a great number of animals.
Can you name which EXACT nutrients you "absolutely cannot get from vegan diets without it becoming a monotonous pain in the neck"? A daily multivitamin isn't hard.
I think generally people are optimizing for health outcome and longevity, not peak athletic performance at your prime age.
But also, I've seen people often assume vegetarian or vegan diets are "healthy". But many people in India for example will still eat a lot of refined carbs, added sugars, fat heavy deep fried foods, large volumes of ghee or seed oils, etc. And total avoidance of animal products can also mean you have some deficiencies in nutrients that can be hard to obtain otherwise.
A plant-forward diet is more specific, like the Mediterranean diet, which itself isn't at all how your average Mediterranean person eats haha. But it involves no processed foods, no added sugar or excessive sugar, diverse set of nutrients by eating a balance of veggies, legumes, nuts, seeds, meats, dairy, fish, and so on all in appropriate proportions, as well as keeping overall caloric intake relatively low.
It's quite hard to eat that way to be honest haha.
Meat and dairy contain the bulk of the saturated fat in the average diet. It's pretty absurd to imagine a diet in which the largest food group is just meat and dairy, but due to the ordering, that almost seems to be implied.
The saturated fat → LDL-C → heart disease relationship has a lot of evidence and history behind it. A very interesting research project if you needed one. I call this advisory a "downgrade" because heart attack and stroke (among other conditions) are both: 1) downstream of saturated fat consumption, and 2) the most prevalent causes of death among people in the developed world.
It also very prominently shows red meat, which is the worst you can do.
fish > poultry > red meat. (Fish and poultry can be swapped, mercury is a real problem).
But really if you are looking for the healthiest proteins then you really can't do much better than nuts and beans.
Red meat beyond having a lot of links to heart disease is also linked to cancer. It should be seen as a treat, not the main thing you should be consuming.
Yup, there's a hole in our data that they appear to be exploiting. Early studies of saturated fat showed it was unhealthy, but then larger, longer studies found nothing. Were the first studies wrong? Or is the problem that we no longer have a control group--people responded to the news by cutting back on saturated fat?
One thing I think we should better emphasize is that it's best to avoid foods that are bad for you, than to eat foods that are good for you. If you can't do both, you should focus on cutting out bad foods over eating healthier foods.
Meat (non-processed, no sugary sauce or gravy), and dairy (plain, fermented, no added sugar). Those are kind of "neutral" foods. If that's all you eat, meaning you don't eat any crap, you're much better off health wise than if you eat crap and try to also eat a bunch of veggies, fish, fruits, legumes, etc.
That's unhealthy and honestly gross. Maybe you have the genes -- there are smokers who make it to 100! -- but you should adjust your diet for your own sake. I wouldn't bet on being an outlier.
I don’t believe there is any solid scientific reason to change my diet. Indeed I’d say there is mild evidence otherwise. I think the main issue is being turning this into a moralizing issue.
The first thing shown on the website is - broccoli.
The top of the pyramid includes both protein (meat, cheese) as well as fruits & vegetables.
The reason that meat is shown first is probably that it's the bigger change (it's been demonized in previous versions), whereas vegetables were always prominent.
The first thing on the website is indeed broccoli. But the first thing in the new inverted pyramid, both on the website and in other graphics of it, is meat. In fact, on the website, when you first get to "The New Pyramid", you'll first see only the left half, the one that has meat and other proteins; you'll have to scroll more to see the right half with vegetables and fruit.
I don't think it is meant to read left to right but top to bottom. Chicken and broccoli are top center, and that is the standard weight lifter meal plan. That said, human dietary needs vary individually by far more than any lobbied leaders will ever communicate.
The website is animated, so there's no question of which direction to read in, the left side literally pops up first lol. I can't lie, I miss websites that stood still, this could've just been a PDF.
BTW, you say "lobbied leaders" -- if you're talking about the scientists who have their names on this report, you'd be very correct. The "conflicting interests" section has loads of references to the cattle and dairy industries.
The only difference from the previous guidance is that it's suggesting eating more meat and dairy, which would come at the expense of veggies, legumes, nuts and seeds.
To be honest, I don't totally disagree from a practical angle. I think we have to acknowledge that most Americans failed to eat large portions of non-processed veggies, legumes, nuts and seeds. The next best thing might be to tell them, ok, at least if you're going to eat meat and dairy in large portions, make sure it's non-processed.
I've found for myself, it's hard to eat perfectly, but it's easier to replace processed foods and added sugar with simpler whole meats, fish and healthy fats like avocado, eggs, etc. And since those have higher satiety it helps with calorie control and so you avoid eating more snacks and treats which are heavily processed and sugary.
That said, in a purely evidence based health sense, it's not as good as the prior ratios from what I've seen of the research.
the rectangular pizzas were never "reheated". i have copies of the recipe cards to make enough trays of pizza to feed a school using the industrial kitchen appliances they have in schools.
and whatever your issue is with chocolate milk, can you link a recent survey that shows the percentage of say, americans, that have had 1 or more glasses of water in the last month? a glass being at least 8floz (1/4 liter or so)
i'm leaning toward "most people don't drink enough, if any, water; furthermore most people are probably varying levels of dehydrated", at least in the US. The fad of carrying water with you everywhere was lambasted into obscurity, at least in the american south. Anecdotally, many people have told me they drink 64 ounces a day, because diet coke counts and so does beer.
that a kid is getting a fortified delicious drink they enjoy is fine by me.
Adults should have no more than 30g of free sugars a day,
(roughly equivalent to 7 sugar cubes).
Children aged 7 to 10 should have no more than 24g
of free sugars a day (6 sugar cubes).
So one small carton they have at school has 30% of an adult's daily intake of added sugar.
And here in largely vegetarian India, everyone is now pushing for more protein and meats because a vegetable-heavy diet has been awful for our public health
Even if Indians ate 2x the meat that they do now, they wouldn’t consume anywhere as much as Americans do. Increasing meat consumption in America is not necessary.
India would do well to consume more protein, and the US would do well to consume less
If you want to actually get full and satiated with a largely vegetarian diet, you will eventually resort to carbs
And this is for a culture that really knows how to make smashingly good vegetarian dishes
I love my vegetables, but a vegetable-heavy diet is clearly not something that everyone can or should do. The people I know who retain their health with vegetarian/vegan diets are usually really well-versed in nutrition
If you look at a lot of the indian vegetarian dishes you'll find things like potatoes fried in butter being a staple.
Chickpeas and yogurt do make a showing, but a lot of indian dishes are devoid of vegetarian protein sources. You need a lot more beans/nuts if you want to eat healthy as a vegetarian.
> a lot of indian dishes are devoid of vegetarian protein sources
What about legumes -- daal (pulses) and chickpeas? They have plenty of protein for vegetable sources. Also: Paneer. What I find in practice: You get a tiny amount of legumes/paneer, and a huge amount of carbs.
Daal is great, but just not nutritionally dense. You will have to drink it by the bowlfuls to get enough protein from daal alone.
Chickpeas have the problem of digestion + prep. You have to soak them overnight, boil them, and only then cook them. There's a reason they're usually reserved as a high-effort Sunday dish in most household and not a daily meal
has your government published any science on this? being completely serious, i'd like to read it. Is India mostly vegetarian because of lack of access to farms/meats, religious reasons, financial, or what? I didn't know it was largely vegetarian. I don't know i had an idea of the ratio or that it would be different than any other country.
Apparently the Mediterranean also is largely vegetarian. at least the eponymous diet is.
Most branches of hinduism condemn meat eating, so this has created a significant pressure against meat production (same as you'll find little production of pork in the Middle East and North Africa). This is not universal, of course, because historically many regions of India had large meat-eating muslim populations as well.
Note that this is typically lacto-ovo-vegetarianism, not veganism.
I fail to see the significance of your link to a group that opposes animal experimentation asking RFK Jr to reduce animal experimentation. Did you paste the wrong URL For the first link?
Isn't every single policy a result of some kind of lobby group? Are you saying that it's corrupt because it's been influenced by a lobby group? Would all policies then be corrupt to some degree? Or is it corrupt because you disagree with the lobby group?
Not all lobby groups are asking for harmful things. But nearly always they act in their own short sighted self interest. Which usually comes at the expense of citizens or the would be customers or competitors.
Which is why sane countries make paying for access and influence illegal.
So, that would be corrupt because you don't agree with it then?
Which are these sane countries? How do you think lobbying should work then? Everyone should get equal access? Hunter and gatherer man was egalitarian like that. Afaik it is a universal feature of civilization that this eventually breaks down. Of all the existent modes of dealing with this problem, money is probably one of the better ones compared to some historical or even contemporary alternatives. I actually will be very surprised if you come up with a single country that credibly makes "paying for access and influence illegal" as that is pretty much the history of all of human civilization, but I would welcome being surprised.
I'm a realist. All these comments were saying "oh this is good they're doing this for my personal health" and I thought "oh, no no no. That's not how this works..."
The irony is Tyson's is an absolutely horrendous organization and ruins food left and right. Not to mention the absurd living conditions for the animals they feed us.
The linked PDFs on realfood.gov transparently cite the industry ties of all the doctors and PhDs involved in long descriptions next to each of their names and readers can decide for themselves if such is "corrupt as hell". PR pieces are an inferential distraction.
>Tyson foods and other meatpacking companies lobbied and funded RFK.
So? They are fighting fire with fire.
Or should sugar,casino and tobacco industries have all the lobbying
Also this doesn't surpass the minimal threshold for being shocked anymore, there's more critical shit going on, I can't be here being outraged at checks notes meat companies pushing that meat is healthy
There's some real science there for a couple of reasons. Protein is a macronutrient you can be malnourished if you don't get enough of even if you eat enough calories and the right micronutrients, and if most of your calories are from protein then you're actually probably not getting as many "burnable" calories as you think you are because (1) the amount of protein you need to meet your daily protein needs never enters the citric acid cycle to oxidized for ATP regeneration, (2) protein is the macronutrient that feels the most filling, and (3) excess protein that goes to the liver to be converted into carbs loses around 30% of its net usable calories due to the energy required for that conversion.
The way we count calories is based on how many calories are in a meal vs the resulting scat, and that just isn't an accurate representation of how the body processes protein such that a protein-heavy diet doesn't have as many calories as you probably think it does, which makes it a healthy choice in an environment where most food-related health problems stem from overeating.
However I agree with your skepticism insofar as when they say "prioritizing protein" they probably mean "prioritizing meat," which is more suspect from a health standpoint and looks somewhat suspicious considering the lobbyists involved.
Most Americans get plenty of protein without trying. It's hard to see how eating more meat should help unless you think the amount of protein actually needed is much more than what the May Clinic thinks: https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speak...
the "industry" obviously makes much more money on "highly processed" and branded foods - more intermediaries, more profits & margins
literally everyone can compete freely in the "whole unprocessed foods" market, and the only real differentiating factors will be quality & taste (as it should be)
Would you say the same thing about the covid vaccination campaigns during the Biden administration? Because billions of dollars were poured into those as well, with record profits for big pharma.
RFK is a retarded public health menace but him saying high protein low carb/low fat diet is generally good isn't retarded and only fat fricks would get mad about it
The original food pyramid was based on a world crafted by calory deficit and worked for it's time, but in a life of excess it causes mass obesity which is partly why americans are so fricking fat.
Here's industry reports
https://www.nationalbeefwire.com/doctors-group-applauds-comm...
https://www.wattagnet.com/business-markets/policy-legislatio...
And straight up lobbying groups
https://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/new-dietary-guideline...
https://www.meatinstitute.org/press/recommend-prioritizing-p...
Lobbying groups, putting out press releases, claiming victory...
Here's some things you won't find in any of the documents, including the PDFs at the bottom: community gardens, local food, farmers markets, grass fed, free range... Because agribusiness doesn't make money with those.
Just because you might like the results doesn't mean they aren't corrupt as hell