A Matter of Taste 



Pyramid Power 



The USDA has abandoned the four basic food groups, 

 and confusion reigns 



by Raymond Sokolov 



More nonsense has been written about 

 nutrition than any other topic so important 

 to the survival of the human race. Fad 

 diets promoted by doctors have cost wor- 

 ried people billions of dollars and millions 

 of hours... for nothing. Meanwhile, even 

 the medical-nutritional establishment 

 (MNE, pronounced mo-ney) has flip- 

 flopped enough on this vital topic to erode 

 the confidence of panicked laypeople. 



As a child, I watched apparently sen- 

 sible adults go on weight-reduction diets 

 heavily canted toward protein and shun- 

 ning carbohydrates. My parents' friends 

 would gorge on steak and other red meats 

 loaded with fat and turn their noses up at 

 potatoes and rice and bread. Then the bad 

 news came in about cholesterol, so they 

 dropped all that red meat and began peel- 

 ing the skin off chicken. They dropped 

 butter altogether, along with eggs, whole 

 milk, and cheese. 



By and by, the news thundered through 

 from the East that Asians, with very little 

 fat of any kind in their diets, are less vul- 

 nerable to many chronic diseases than we 

 Westerners are. They also had lower rates 

 of colon cancer because they were happy 

 to eat foods high in fiber. 



These dire facts led more or less di- 

 rectly to the boom for oat bran, which 

 some studies showed provided an obvious 

 source of fiber. (The phrase high fiber al- 

 ways makes me think of high five, that ex- 

 uberant greeting popularized by some 

 African-Americans. After eating an oat 



bran muffin, I often suppress the impulse 

 to give my wife a high five across the table 

 to celebrate my dietary shrewdness.) No 

 sooner had American cereal producers ad- 

 justed to the demand for oat bran than the 

 flighty world of official nutritional dogma 

 came forth with an awesome and all-en- 

 compassing ukase. In 1992 the U. S. De- 

 partment of Agriculture made headlines 

 and waves with the Food Guide Pyramid. 



Intended as a simplifying, graphic de- 

 vice for representing modern thinking 

 about healthful eating, the pyramid con- 

 fused laypeople and infuriated profession- 

 als in both industry and science. Leaving 

 aside that the new symbol was not a 

 (three-dimensional) pyramid but a (two- 

 dimensional) triangle, the "pyramid" — 

 with its four "tiers" and six "groups" sub- 

 divided into eighteen categories of 

 foods — was not a simplifying substitute 

 for the old-fashioned system of four food 

 groups that it was meant to replace. 



The old four groups (originally seven, 

 but don't try to keep track; no nondietitian 

 ever really succeeded) were all created 

 equal, just like people. In a "balanced" 

 diet, educated consumers divided their 

 meals equitably between each group: (1) 

 milk and dairy products; (2) meat, 

 chicken, and fish; (3) grains and breads; 

 (4) fruits and vegetables. 



From the modem point of view, this is 

 not only a crude system but also a danger- 

 ous one. It seems to recommend that we 

 devote half our consumption to foods rich 



in fat and low in fiber (groups 1 and 2). 

 The pyramid abandons this innocent pol- 

 icy of apparent nutritional egalitarianism 

 in favor of a frank elitism favoring carbo- 

 hydrate sources over protein sources and 

 demoting fat to pariah status. At the pyra- 

 mid's broad base, the bread, cereal, rice, 

 and pasta group is approved for six to 

 eleven daily servings. The next tier up, 

 narrower and by implication less worth- 

 while, contains both the vegetable group 

 (three to five servings) and the fruit group 

 (two to four servings). Still higher up, tier 

 three is divided between the milk, yogurt, 

 and cheese group (two to three servings) 

 and the meat, poultry, fish, dry beans, 

 eggs, and nuts group (two to three serv- 

 ings). At the apex of the triangle are fats, 

 oils, and sweets, which we are admon- 

 ished by the USDA to "Use Sparingly." 



Brief reflection should make it obvious 

 why almost no one liked this new dietary 

 polygon. Those who took it on its own 

 terms wanted to know why foods of such 

 different nutritional content as navy beans 

 and porterhouse steak were put in the 

 same group. The dairy industry wondered, 

 with justice, why skim milk and nonfat 

 yogurt should be lumped together with 

 whole milk and cheese. OUve oil produc- 

 ers didn't tiiink their product should be 

 tarred with the same brush as lard and 

 chocolate fudge. 



These were not just sectarian concerns. 

 They raised real questions, but they did 

 not go to file heart of die pyramid's prob- 



72 Natural History 1/94 



