If your objective is to try and provide people with the lowest hanging heuristic for how to avoid unwanted weight gain, avoiding high fat foods is a pretty good candidate, since fat has the highest caloric content per gram (9) when compared to protiens and carbs (4). This appears to be the traditional view that the crazy government is trying to shove down our throats, so to speak.
This doesn’t explain why the government put starches at the bottom of the pyramid, thus encouraging people to eat as many of them as possible.
If you follow the food pyramid your combined vegetable and fruits should almost equal your starch consumption. Thats not “as much starch as possible.”
For dinner, a 4 oz steak, 6 asparagus spears, a cup of rice and a beer, with an orange for dessert fits the food pyramid and with the exception of the beer, would probably be something paleo people would also eat.
Ok, replace “as many of them as possible” with “a lot of them”, my point still stands.
A lot is relative- one more serving of starch a day then your combined fruit and vegetable servings. I know paleos that eat enough rice to be (inadvertently) eating the food pyramid recommendations.
If your objective is to try and provide people with the lowest hanging heuristic for how to avoid unwanted weight gain, avoiding high fat foods is a pretty good candidate, since fat has the highest caloric content per gram (9) when compared to protiens and carbs (4). This appears to be the traditional view that the crazy government is trying to shove down our throats, so to speak
And pointing out that if this were the motivation, they wouldn’t have put starches at the bottom.
Why not? The pyramid says basically “avoid added fats and sugars”, and then suggests a diet thats 4 servings of meat and cheese, 5 servings of fruit and vegetables and six servings of starches.
If their motivation for telling people to avoid fats was simple that fats are highly caloric, one would expect them to not tell people that they should eat a lot of starch, which by the way was up to 11 servings (not just 6 servings).
Well, a large fraction of the grains grown in the US is fed to livestock, so you’d have to be thinking about something more specific than “grain farmers”.
This doesn’t explain why the government put starches at the bottom of the pyramid, thus encouraging people to eat as many of them as possible.
If you follow the food pyramid your combined vegetable and fruits should almost equal your starch consumption. Thats not “as much starch as possible.”
For dinner, a 4 oz steak, 6 asparagus spears, a cup of rice and a beer, with an orange for dessert fits the food pyramid and with the exception of the beer, would probably be something paleo people would also eat.
Ok, replace “as many of them as possible” with “a lot of them”, my point still stands.
A lot is relative- one more serving of starch a day then your combined fruit and vegetable servings. I know paleos that eat enough rice to be (inadvertently) eating the food pyramid recommendations.
I was responding to Brillyant’s claim:
And pointing out that if this were the motivation, they wouldn’t have put starches at the bottom.
Why not? The pyramid says basically “avoid added fats and sugars”, and then suggests a diet thats 4 servings of meat and cheese, 5 servings of fruit and vegetables and six servings of starches.
I don’t see how this contradicts Brillyant.
If their motivation for telling people to avoid fats was simple that fats are highly caloric, one would expect them to not tell people that they should eat a lot of starch, which by the way was up to 11 servings (not just 6 servings).
Do you have a particular explanation in mind for why they did?
Well, one explanation I’ve heard blames the farm lobby.
It does look like they are quite powerful, but OTOH it’s not obvious to me why people eating grains benefit farmers more than people eating meat.
The farm lobby might not include all farmers equally—grain farmers might have more of an edge.
Well, a large fraction of the grains grown in the US is fed to livestock, so you’d have to be thinking about something more specific than “grain farmers”.