18 thoughts on “The USDA”

  1. It was exactly this kind of dietary advice that killed my father, over three decades ago.

    Just out of curiosity, is this just your personal conviction or someone’s professional medical opinion?

  2. My personal conviction, but I could no doubt find a number of medical professionals who would agree if I described the situation. They had him on the standard low-fat high-carb diet of the time.

  3. Even the Harvard pyramid doesn’t look good to me. We need to get grains un-ingrained from our culture. Just go paleo/primal/gaps and you’ll be much better off.

  4. Any food guide that lumps in monounsaturated (olive oil, for example) with saturated fats is utter bunk. They are clearly not the same regarding health ramifications.

    Rand, my condolences for your father.

  5. “By sheer coincidence, the USDA recommendations for the percentage of a particular type of food we should eat always seems to roughly parallel the relative economic size of the agricultural sector that produces that food. I wonder why?

    One of the biggest reforms we could make in government would be to legally separate promotional, regulatory and research powers. ”

    http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/20639.html

  6. I don’t think anybody – not the USDA, not futurepundit, not anyone – knows enough about how humans and our vast population of synergistic fauna deal with the foods we consume to give any advice on what to eat.

    All the past advice has been contradictory and wrong and I see no evidence that present advice is any more soundly researched. It’s all opinion with cherry picked study results statistically tortured to get the desired outcome.

    There is no ‘live forever’ diet.

  7. I lost thirty pounds in less than a year by switching to a mostly meat-and-salad diet. I also cut way down on my portions. (I remember when I was a kid when you went to a restaurant and ordered the pork chops you’d get one pork chop, and you could see the plate between the other portions. Now they bring you what amounts to a platter of food piled high. Henry VIII would push back from our tables before finishing.)

    Since I’ve been working I’ve upped my carb intake. I’ve gained ten pounds back. I’m also a lot more tired than I should be. Of course, I’m also middle-aged, so my metabolism isn’t what it used to be, but I don’t think I have to be a certified nutritionist to know what’s going on with my own body and what the cause is.

  8. “I lost thirty pounds in less than a year by switching to a mostly meat-and-salad diet.”

    Weight loss always results (in the short term) from cutting calories.

    “Since I’ve been working I’ve upped my carb intake. I’ve gained ten pounds back. I’m also a lot more tired than I should be.”

    Not a surprise. You’re tired because the low-carb diet exhausted your adrenal glands and down-regulated your thyroid. The down-regulated thyroid is also the reason your metabolism has slowed. This is called the “famine response”, and the natural result of adding calories back into your diet will be to gain weight.

    If I were you I’d pay less attention to your weight and more to your body temperature. A low body temp is a sign of a downregulated metabolism, and pre-cursor to many diseases (like heart disease).

    —

    The problem with FuturePundit (and most popular diet advice) is that he doesn’t appreciate that the endocrine system controls weight gain and loss, not the number or type of calories you consume.

    —

    “I don’t think anybody – not the USDA, not futurepundit, not anyone – knows enough about how humans and our vast population of synergistic fauna deal with the foods we consume to give any advice on what to eat.”

    Amen to that. I thought I new a lot about nutrition 10 years ago (I was paleo then), but I’ve learned so much in the last three years it’s like learning the world is actually round(!). The FDA doesn’t know half of that, and I have zero confidence that I now know everything there is to know.

  9. “Since I’ve been working I’ve upped my carb intake. I’ve gained ten pounds back. I’m also a lot more tired than I should be.”

    Not a surprise. You’re tired because the low-carb diet exhausted your adrenal glands and down-regulated your thyroid.

    Brock, did you actually read what she wrote? She started feeling tired when she upped the carbs. She was seemingly fine before that. Your response is a complete non sequitur.

  10. He also didn’t write anything I didn’t know. Were there any questions marks in my previous post? Why do people always think I’m asking advice when I’m just telling them something I’m doing? (Please note: that was a rhetorical question. Don’t answer it.)

  11. Rand said:

    Brock, did you actually read what she wrote? She started feeling tired when she upped the carbs. She was seemingly fine before that. Your response is a complete non sequitur.

    Only if you don’t understand how the endocrine system works. Sorry if I didn’t explain it well enough.

    A low-carb diet runs the adrenal glands hard, so you feel alert. But redlining the adrenals eventually exhausts them. A high-carb diet (as long as it’s healthy carbs, not Froot Loops and Cola) rehabilitates them. But going through rehab sucks. Adrenal rehab feels like being exhausted for a while, because the adrenals basically shut down while they heal. If it helps you mentally, picture them taking a nice refreshing nap.

    Dr. Diana Schwarzbein (an Endocrinologist) explains this well in her book, The Schwarzbein Principle.

    How long this healing period lasts depends on how exhausted your adrenals were. It took me several months, but then I’d been on a low-carb/paleo diet for eight years. Someone who was only on it for a year or less might get through in a week or too.

    Andrea said:

    Why do people always think I’m asking advice when I’m just telling them something I’m doing?

    Hey Princess, it’s not all about you. I threw the information out there for anyone who cares to read it.

  12. Well excuse me, Doctor House. I didn’t mean to interrupt your lecture. Pray, do continue. I’ll just wait over here in silence like a good little girl. I should after all learn not to dis my betters, who know so much more about life, the universe, and everything.

    Everyone! Everyone! (ting ting ting!) Please stop what you’re doing and pay attention! Brock has something very important to tell us!

    Doctor? We’re all eyes and ears! Drop that science-y stuff on us! (Folds hands, sits and stares in sycophantic awe.)

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