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My surgery was on Friday morning 7am, per the nurses instructions, I had not eaten since dinner on Thursday, I had nothing on Friday except some water Friday evening, when they brought be breakfast on Saturday morning, I was hungry and looking forward to maybe some scrambled eggs, toast, etc., I was brought beef broth, jello, coffee and some OJ, nothing solid, when I asked they said the reason was in case I had to be rushed back into surgery, they wanted nothing in my stomach, I didn’t get really solid food until 4-5 days after surgery.

The Food Pyramid originally came out of the committee of Sen George McGovern (D-SD). There's pretty good evidence that his staff was mostly vegetarian and were trying to discourage eating of meat using the smoke screen of cardiac health.

McGovern's Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs Versus the: Meat Industry on the Diet-Heart Question (1976–1977)

Without providing a detailed account of the committee’s battles, nutritionist and activist Marion Nestle has characterized the revision as one of government surrender to special interests.5 To be sure, she is partially correct. Other histories have similarly characterized the committee’s actions, but without a close examination of the debates that occurred.6 However, a careful study of the committee’s activities is needed to reveal the complexities of this confrontation.7 Through such a narrative, we have shown that the committee, whose members included Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Hubert Humphrey (D, MN), and Robert Dole (R, KS), were faced with issues they were professionally incapable of resolving: conflicts within science over the interpretation of data, questions of scientific validity, and notions of proof. Ultimately, it was a lack of scientific consensus on all these factors, and not simply political acquiescence, that allowed special interests to gain a foothold in the debate and secure a modification of the initial guidelines on meat consumption.

As it was then, and as it is now, idiot politicians making policy on things they are completely incapable of understanding but rather operating off a political agenda. See also the banning of DDT and now decades of harmful policy over ~~global warming~~ climate change.