Friday, December 21, 2007

The Food Pyramid

This is an excerpt from "Your Hidden Food Allergies Are Making You Fat" by Rudy Rivera MD and Roger Deutsch.

It is interesting that the official USDA food pyramid recommends a large sampling of grains and fruit each day. This pyramid may represent a way to ensure adequate nutrient intake in the form of vitamins and minerals, but it certainly is no way to lose weight. Whereas the USDA food pyramid was not intended as a with loss plan, normal healthy eating should promote normal weight.

As noted by Dr Barry Sears in his book The Zone, the food pyramid closely resembles the proportions of fat, protein, and carbohydrates fed to cattle in feedlots to fatten them for slaughter. I suggest you rethink the food pyramid. If it fattens cattle so well, why would it make us thinner? Observe that "food pyramid" Americans aren't getting thinner; they are getting fatter. And that's not just a coincidence.

The 2001 Annual Meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity revealed preliminary results from a three-centre study comparing the Atkins high-protein diet to a conventional low-fat, high-carbohydrate plan. The researchers concluded that the Atkins diet produced favourable results on weight, HDL (High-Density Lipoproteins, a combination of fat and proteins which carry cholesterol from the cells to the liver for breakdown and elimination from the body), triglycerides (the main type of stored fat in animals), and retention of study subjects.

The low fat plan showed favourable effects on total cholesterol and LDL (Low Density Lipoprotein cholesterol is commonly referred to as "bad cholesterol") and is thought to be a major risk factor for heart disease cholesterol.

Lose the pyramid, folks, it's a bust. And to make your diet work even better, determine your food sensitivities and lock out the processed grains and sweets.

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