The Crumbling Food Pyramid
Americans are puzzled about what we should be eating these days, and, believe it or not, our national confusion about food may be related at least in part to the food pyramid, reports Sunday Morning's Rita Braver.
It was created by the federal government starting in 1992. It tells us how many servings of foods we should be eating each day. But it hasn't led to a healthy American diet.
"The current pyramid stinks. It doesn't distinguish between skim milk and ice cream. It doesn't distinguish between beans or lean chicken and a porterhouse steak. It doesn't distinguish between white bread, whole wheat bread and donuts. You know, it's severely flawed," says Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and a long-time critic of government food policy.
The government agrees that the food pyramid wasn't detailed enough. Eric Hentges, head of Nutrition Policy for the Department of Agriculture, says another problem is that most of us eat much bigger servings of each food group than the pyramid recommends.
During the period that the pyramid has been in place, the number of fat Americans has enormously enlarged. Two-thirds of us are now overweight, and some experts actually blame some of that on the food pyramid.
"I think it started the boom in obesity. The timing is absolutely on target with our epidemic of obesity and diabetes," says Dr. Arthur Agatston, the creator the South Beach Diet, one of several low carbohydrate diets that have turned conventional food theory on its head.
"And I was frustrated in my practice, watching my patients and the country and frankly myself getting fatter on a low fat, high carbohydrate diet," he says.
In his work as a cardiologist, Agatston came to realize that science has now made great strides in understanding how food works in the body.
He says there are good fats, like olive and fish oil, versus butter and animal fat, and good carbs, like those from vegetables, whole grains and fruits, versus refined grains and sugars.
"I don't blame the government though. It was the best science at the time, and they didn't understand that not all carbohydrates were created equal," he says.
And now, the government is about to shake up the old food pyramid. That's already set off a scramble among food producers. The American Italian Pasta Company, headquartered in Kansas City, makes about a billion pounds of pasta a year.
"We actually start with North American grown durum wheat," says Melissa Hendricks, the company's director of marketing.
She acknowledges that the company has seen a 7 percent drop in sales for the first quarter of this year, attributed to the low carb craze. But she argues that pasta is a healthy, complex carbohydrate.
"It's our understanding that carbohydrates will be still be a significant portion of the diet no matter what they try to reconfigure it," she says.
Of course not everybody in Kansas City wants carbs to stage a comeback.
Lyndsey Shannon, owner of BB's Lawnside Barbeque, says she has customers on no-carb diets who come in and say, "I'll have the Big Porker sandwich. Hold the bread."
The president of the Kansas City Royal, the largest livestock show in the country, naturally wants to see meat given a prime place under the new government guidelines. "I think as the consumers become more and more educated, they understand the importance of protein in their local diets," he says.
So what will be the base of the new food pyramid? Steak or spaghetti? Fruits and vegetables? Well, there may not even be a pyramid anymore. A new configuration is in the works, but how it will look is still a secret.
"Truly, we are out in the field looking at a myriad of graphic representations," says Hentges.
It may be more like one of the shapes used by other countries, but no matter what, the government will be putting out some new messages. For one thing: how much we should eat will vary with a person's age and level of physical activity.
The new guidelines will also advise that we increase our intake of fruits and vegetables, whole grains and non-fat or low fat milk products, choose fats and carbohydrates wisely, and limit salt.
We won't be specifically told which food products to avoid. Hentages says you can eat all foods, as long as you balance them over a week's time. He denies this is an effort to avoid offending certain food processors. Instead, he says he is trying to avoid giving consumers the impression that there is a silver bullet - some food that you can just avoid - that will take care of all of your nutritional issues.