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Health Sciences Institute e-Alert ************************January 25, 2005 It will soon become part of turn-of-the-century nostalgia. In 2055, oldtimers will ask, "Remember that old USDA Food Guide Pyramid?" Of course, one way to ensure that you'll live long enough to BECOME an oldtimer is to ignore most of the dietary advice that's been graphically depicted for the past 13 years in the Food Guide Pyramid. Soon, however, we'll have a new graphic to ignore. A revised Pyramid will be unveiled this coming spring, and there's speculation that an entirely different graphic image will be employed to illustrate the new food guidelines that were recently announced. Whatever the new image may be, this much is certain: The USDA is still mired in several key dietary misconceptions that it just can't seem to shake. ------------------------------------------------------------ Brain food ------------------------------------------------------------ The new USDA guidelines don't have it ALL wrong. They're mostly accurate on the "no-brainer" topics. For instance, the guidelines recommend that everyone get exercise every day. For most of us that certainly couldn't hurt. But most experts we've spoken to agree daily exercise isn't required, as long as we get moving regularly. So the 60 minutes per day suggested by the guidelines is excessive. The recommendation to simply eat as much as you need rather than all you can is good advice. Studies show that Americans aren't content to eat their fill; as a nation we tend to gorge ourselves. If that gorging was done on mostly fresh fruits and vegetables, we might not be in bad shape. But our collective shape tends to be obese because the gorging is done on mostly processed foods that contain plenty of simple carbohydrates. And speaking of fruits and vegetables, the new guidelines rightly encourage more consumption. The importance of whole grains is also emphasized. (You can't help but wonder if General Mills had some influence here. GM recently announced that within the next couple of months, all GM cereal products (including Lucky Charms, for Pete's sake!) will be converted from processed flour to whole grain. Whether TRUE whole grain will actually be used is another matter. But again, these are no-brainers. When it comes to more complex dietary issues - call them "brainers" - the new guidelines have something in common with previous guideline revisions: they just don't get it. ------------------------------------------------------------ Staff of life ------------------------------------------------------------ The new guidelines recommend consuming three or more ounces of whole-grain products per day. But it's followed with this: "...with the rest of the recommended grains coming from enriched or whole-grain products." Of course, the key word here is "enriched." An example of an "enriched product" is white bread that has nutrients added. Enrich it all you want; white bread is not good nutrition. Period. And then there's milk. The guidelines not only suggest consuming three cups of milk or milk products each day, but they also say you should avoid raw, unpasteurized milk. Just one problem: they've got it backwards. As we've seen in previous e-Alerts, if you MUST drink milk, the most nutritious form is raw milk. The guidelines also recommend that milk intake should be restricted to fat-free ("skim" milk) or low-fat milk. But is this good nutrition? According to the experts, the skimming process actually makes the nutrients in milk (such as calcium) more difficult to absorb. ------------------------------------------------------------ Fear of fat ------------------------------------------------------------ And finally, the guidelines are sticking to the completely overblown fear of saturated fat intake. Here's the recommendation: "Consume less than 10 percent of calories from saturated fatty acids." Gee... are saturated fats really all that scary? In a word: No. Last September, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition carried a remarkable overview of studies that have examined saturated fat intake. Here are some of the results found by researchers with the Department of Food Science and Technology, University of California, Davis (UC):
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