James Krieger
We've all seen it. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Guide Pyramid. The pyramid that tells us that we should have a certain number of servings from each food group each day. The pyramid that is our guide to healthy eating. But is it?
The bottom of the pyramid represents the foods that should make up the bulk of your diet: the Bread, Cereal, Rice, and Pasta Group. 6-11 servings a day from this group and you are supposedly on your way to a healthier life. What the pyramid doesn't tell you, though, is that you are setting yourself up for insulin resistance, obesity, and adult onset diabetes if you consistently follow these recommendations.
Let's take a closer look at what happens in your body when you eat. After you eat a meal, your blood sugar levels start to climb. Your body likes to keep blood sugar within a narrow range; it doesn't like too much sugar floating around in the blood. As blood sugar levels climb out of your body's normal ranges, your body releases insulin to bring blood sugar levels back down; the higher and faster the rise in blood sugar, the greater the release of insulin. Insulin is an important hormone that helps shuttle glucose and amino acids into muscle cells. While this is good, insulin also has a bad side in that it shoves glucose and fat into fat cells as well as inhibits fat breakdown. Therefore, too much insulin is not desirable.
The glycemic index is an index that was originally created for diabetics that tells you how quickly blood sugar levels will rise after eating a certain type of food. White bread is scored as 100 on the index, and all other foods are scored against white bread. Foods with a lower glycemic index will create a slower rise in blood sugar, and foods with a higher glycemic index will create a faster rise in blood sugar. For example, whole milk comes in at a measly 39, while non-dairy Tofu frozen dessert rates at a whopping 164.
Let's look at the glycemic indices of some of the foods that the pyramid recommends that we eat the most of. A white bagel rates at 103. Cornflakes rate at a huge 119. Instant rice boiled for 6 minutes rates at an even higher 128. Cream of wheat rates at 100, while pretzels come in at an enormous 116. Rice cakes are not far behind at 110, waffles are 109, water crackers are 102, and Mikey's favorite Life cereal is a significant 94.
What does this mean? Regularly eating these foods throughout the day every day, as the pyramid tells you to, can create chronically elevated levels of insulin (chronic hyperinsulinemia) due to the rapid rises in blood sugar caused by eating these foods. Not only does this increase fat storage, but it can also result in a down-regulation of cells' insulin receptors over a long period of time, which is known as insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is the cause of adult onset diabetes and is also a factor in obesity and other health problems.
So how do you avoid these problems? Engaging in regular, intense exercise helps increase insulin sensitivity, so your body doesn't need to produce as much insulin to get the job done. Intense exercise also ensures that blood glucose finds its way into muscle cells where it belongs and not into fat cells, since glycogen levels are lower in muscles after intense exercise.
Stick to eating foods that are lower on the glycemic index, and when you do eat high glycemic foods, make sure that you combine them with sources of protein, fat, and fiber because these will slow the rise in blood sugar. Eat 5-6 small meals a day rather than 2-3 large ones; this will help avoid the wild swings in insulin common with eating less frequently.
Those of you interested in seeing a complete glycemic index of foods should check out the Glycemic Index website maintained by Rick Mendosa (there is also a link to it in our Links section).
Eating to maintain a healthy, lean body requires insulin management. The USDA Food Guide Pyramid is the antithesis of a healthy diet that manages insulin levels. The USDA has some serious revisions to do. Washington State University Athletics
If the members of the American medical establishment were to have a collective find-yourself-standing-naked-in-Times-Square-type nightmare, this might be it. They spend 30 years ridiculing Robert Atkins, author of the phenomenally-best-selling ''Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution'' and ''Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution,'' accusing the Manhattan doctor of quackery and fraud, only to discover that the unrepentant Atkins was right all along. Or maybe it's this: they find that their very own dietary recommendations -- eat less fat and more carbohydrates -- are the cause of the rampaging epidemic of obesity in America. Or, just possibly this: they find out both of the above are true.
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This is the state of mind I imagine that mainstream nutritionists, researchers and physicians must inevitably take to the fat-versus-carbohydrate controversy. They may come around, but the evidence will have to be exceptionally compelling. Although this kind of conversion may be happening at the moment to John Farquhar, who is a professor of health research and policy at Stanford University and has worked in this field for more than 40 years. When I interviewed Farquhar in April, he explained why low-fat diets might lead to weight gain and low-carbohydrate diets might lead to weight loss, but he made me promise not to say he believed they did. He attributed the cause of the obesity epidemic to the ''force-feeding of a nation.'' Three weeks later, after reading an article on Endocrinology 101 by David Ludwig in the Journal of the American Medical Association, he sent me an e-mail message asking the not-entirely-rhetorical question, ''Can we get the low-fat proponents to apologize?''
Nine times out of then the market gets it right only to have government come along years or decades later and, because of market force backlash against a government that facilitated the problem in the first place, we get politicians and bureaucrats jumping in to save the day. Except they never mention that they are part of the problem and that it was the market that exposed the government fraud. The government always points its finger at the market makers.
That's how this came about:
"Politicians and bureaucrats create and implement roughly 3,000 new laws and regulations each year. That number increases on average from one year to the next. Each year they tell us that the new laws are "must-have laws" that people and society can't prosper without. They do that, so they imply, to keep people from running society headlong into destruction. To that end lawyers are their greatest champions.
Yet how is it that citizens and the society they make up has managed to not only survive but increase prosperity when they didn't have this year's 3,000 new laws last year or for decades before. Likewise, how did citizens increase prosperity for decades prior to last year's 3,000 new must-have laws? And they do that despite a mountain of laws that they've already been saddled/burdened with. Thirty new laws a year is probably overkill. But 3,000 is insane."
Many of those laws and regulations are collusion with market makers. In other words, political entrepreneurs (not market entrepreneurs) seeking to gain unfair advantage. But they couldn't do that if the politicians weren't putting up for sale access to government power in the first place.
Proposed laws and regulations 3,001 - 3,517: Entry the food police to write the script...
It is also undeniable, note students of Endocrinology 101, that mankind never evolved to eat a diet high in starches or sugars. ''Grain products and concentrated sugars were essentially absent from human nutrition until the invention of agriculture,'' Ludwig says, ''which was only 10,000 years ago.'' This is discussed frequently in the anthropology texts but is mostly absent from the obesity literature, with the prominent exception of the low-carbohydrate-diet books.
Also, man has always been a carnivore. Those espousing the vegetarian mantra have no rational explanation to combat the nature of man.