Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss (12 page)

Using weight instead of calories in nutrient-analysis tables has evolved into a ploy to hide how nutritionally unsound many foods are. The role of the USDA was originally to promote the products of the animal agriculture industry.
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Over fifty years ago, the USDA began promoting the so-called four basic food groups, with meat and dairy products in the number one and two spots on the list. Financed by the meat and dairy industry and backed by nutritional scientists on the payroll of the meat and dairy industry, this promotion ignored science.
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This program could be more accurately labeled “the four food myths.” It was taught in every classroom in America, with posters advocating a diet loaded with animal protein, fat, and cholesterol. The results of this fraudulent program were dramatic—in more ways than one. Americans began eating more and more animal foods. The campaign sparked the beginning of the fastest-growing cancer epidemic in history, and heart attack rates soared to previously unheard-of levels.

For years and years the USDA resisted lowering cholesterol and dietary fat recommendations in spite of the irrefutable evidence that Americans were committing suicide with food. Heavy political pressure, lobbyists, and money blocked the path to change.
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Promoting nutrient analysis of foods by weight instead of by calorie became a great way to keep excess calories, cholesterol, and saturated fat in the diet—a terrific strategy to create a nation with an epidemic of obesity, heart disease, and cancer. A foreign enemy out to destroy America could not have devised a more effective and insidious plot. How ironic that this was the program designed by our own government, promoted with our own tax dollars, and justified on the ground that it served the public interest.

With all the scientific data available today, including massive investigational studies on human health and diet, you would think that people would know which foods are best to eat and why—but most people are still confused about diet and nutrition. Why?

Part of the problem is that most of us are slow to make changes, especially when they involve personal habits and family traditions. Most people do not embrace change. They are more comfortable with familiarity and cling to long-held but incorrect information. In spite of a vast increase in nutritional information, much of it is contradictory and has led to only more confusion.

Our government spends over $20 billion on price supports that benefit the dairy, beef, and veal industries.
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This money is given to farmers to artificially reduce the cost of crops used to feed cows, thereby helping to reduce the prices we pay for dairy foods, fowl, and meat. Fruits and vegetables grown primarily for human consumption are specifically excluded from USDA price supports.

Out of one pocket, we pay billions of our tax dollars to support the production of expensive, disease-causing foods. Out of the other pocket, we pay medical bills that are too high because our overweight population consumes too much of these rich,
disease-causing foods. Our tax dollars are actually used to make our society sicker and keep our health insurance costs high.

The USDA Food Pyramid (
Figure 1
) was in place until 2005, when it was replaced with MyPyramid (
Figure 2
). MyPyramid includes twelve intake levels, from 1,000 calories per day to 3,200 per day, and is designed to help consumers find the right caloric balance.

The MyPyramid recommendations for a 2,000-calorie diet are:

Grains, 6 ounces daily

Vegetables, 5 servings or 2½ cups daily

Fruits, 4 servings or 2 cups daily

Oil, 6 teaspoons daily

Milk, 3 cups daily

Meat and beans, 5½ ounces daily

Since early childhood we have been bombarded with incorrect nutritional dietary advice, and unfortunately the scandal continues today. Even after decades of scientific research refuting its recommendations, the latest USDA recommendation—MyPyramid—is only a slight improvement. While the recommended servings of vegetables and fruits have been increased and exercise is recommended, it still reinforces the deadly dietary errors that people have become accustomed to making.

The food pyramid endorses a level of animal-food consumption that causes the diseases that kill us: heart attacks and cancer.

Foods also are grouped in ways that don’t make sense. Meat and beans are in the same food group because they are considered protein-rich foods. Nuts and seeds are not even shown. However, while nuts, seeds, and beans have been shown to reduce cholesterol levels and heart disease risk, meat is linked to increased risk.

MyPyramid would lead people to believe that milk should be consumed on a daily basis. Including milk as its own very prominent group implies that it is an essential part of a healthy diet, which is anything but the truth, especially with the strong association of milk with prostate cancer.
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The pyramid offers little help for those really wanting to reduce their health risks.

USDA FOOD GUIDE PYRAMID

Figure 1

Figure 2

This is an exercise in political correctness, not nutritional science. Could it be possible that the USDA continues to be unduly influenced by political pressure exerted by food industry groups? A pyramid based on science and science alone would have to place vegetables at the foundation!

After many years of our population being advised to increase its consumption of produce, half of all Americans still don’t eat three vegetable servings a day. That total even includes those heart attack–causing foods that are fried in trans fats—french fries and potato chips. On any given day, no fruit whatsoever passes the lips of half of all Americans.

In 2010 the National Cancer Institute budgeted about four million dollars to promote the virtues of fruits and vegetables. Compare that with McDonald’s $1.2 billion spent on U.S. marketing. The major cause of all diseases afflicting Americans today is a produce-deficient diet.

Based on an exhaustive look at research data from around the world over the past fifteen years, my recommendation is that your diet should contain over 90 percent of calories from unrefined plant foods. This high percentage of nutrient-dense plant foods in the diet allows us to predict freedom from cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, and excess body weight. Fruits, vegetables, and beans must be the base of your food pyramid; otherwise, you will be in a heap of trouble down the road.

The diseases that afflict, and eventually kill, almost all Americans can be avoided. You can live a high-quality, disease-free life and remain physically active and healthy. You can die peacefully and uneventfully at an old age, as nature intended.

To achieve the results in preventing and reversing disease, and attaining a permanent healthy body weight, we must be concerned with the
nutritional quality
of our diet.

The picture is becoming crystal clear—the key to what will make you thin will also make you healthy. Once you learn to “eat to live,” thinness and health will walk hand in hand, happily ever after.