100 Years Of Conflicting Nutrition Advice

Government-sponsored nutrition advice, though scientific and fact-based, has varied and conflicted greatly over the past 100 years.  In fact, present day advice is literally the antithesis of the advice given 92 years ago.  Many scholars and academics reflect on this issue often blaming lack of technology and research, all the time wondering how it is possible that we were so wrong and uniformed before.

My thoughts? They weren't wrong before.  We aren't wrong now. The nutritional advice delved out by the federal government reflects the contextual and nutritional needs of the population.  In 1919 the US created a poster featuring a young girl sitting at the dinner table with bread, a jug of milk and a plate of cookies in front of her.  The caption on the bottom: "Simple Suppers Are Best."  At the time, the government advised cutting back on fruits and vegetables while bulking up on milk, whole milk that is.  The government encouraged parents to make sure to butter their children's bread and provide a glass of whole milk as often as possible.

Nutritionists today would physically cringe at the thought of such a diet.  Emphasizing refined flours found in bread and cookies in addition to promoting whole milk, one of the fattiest and least nutritive foods.  This trend of advice continued on up until around the 80s.  For a while, butter and margarine had their own section on the food pyramid.

Note that butter and margarine have their own section

So how can I defend such advice as being accurate?  This advice reflects the nutritional needs of the population at the time.  Nutrition can't be evaluated in a vacuum.  To determine nutritional advice you must look at the choleric demands of the population.  In the 20's and 40's, a large portion of the population was employed by factories, demanding physical labor.  People needed to, essentially, carbo-load to survive.  The period from 1920-1950s also represents a time when children were chronically hungry.  The government began trying to develop school lunch problems to address the fact that kids were literally wasting away.  The nutritional advice from the federal government aimed to help the country survive.  In a time with little money, physically demanding work and starving children, it made sense to encourage citizens to eat cheap, high calorie foods.

Today, America is in crisis due to unprecedented rates of obesity and diabetes. Over 2/3 of adults in the United States are either overweight or obese and over 25 million people are diagnosed with diabetes.  In addition, each year over 13,000 children are newly diagnosed with diabetes.  The USDA is slowly starting to adjust their nutrition standards to reflect the needs of the population.

I say slowly because, despite great changes in nutritional advice and promotions, the government still enforces a caloric quota for lunches provided by public schools.  This policy was incredibly effective in the 20's and 40's but, today, it should be criminal to literally add empty (nonnutritive) calories to a child's plate in America's current state of unhealthy abundance and illness.

Several years ago we saw the infamous food pyramid, which favored eating high levels of grains and breads, meats and dairy, replaced with "myPyramid."  MyPyramid confused the population.  No one knew what it meant!  Each part of the graphic had a deeper meaning, unfortunately, the government did not adequately explain those deeper meanings to the general population.

Stairs = exercise AND each of the six steps represents something (thus, the confusion)

Width of each triangle = relative amount per day

Image based on proportions, not serving size

In January,  myPlate replaced myPyramid.  The plate offers a visualization of what a well balanced meal should look like.  Notably, dairy is off to the side, whereas in many previous posters, it was the centerpiece.

All of these government sponsored public health campaigns, though conflicting, represent a long-term and aggressive effort to protect the health and safety of US citizens.  The government works to promote the best and most contextually necessary nutrition advice.  Had the government had a bit more foresight and changed their campaigns from high carbohydrate, high calorie foods to low calorie, high nutritive foods sooner, we might have seen a different set of disease statistics.  For example, if the USDA had changed their campaign in the early 70's, we could have adjusted the attitudes of the population in time t change the fact that 1 in 3 children born in 2000 and later will have diabetes by age 50.  The USDA needs to start looking ahead and making predictions about how the population will change based on their campaigns.