Death by Food Pyramid: How Shoddy Science, Sketchy Politics and Shady Special Interests Have Ruined Our Health

Denise Minger has a lot to say that’s worth saying, but she doesn’t say it as well or as clearly or fairly as she could or should. If you did not know it already, there is no single diet that is best for all people. Most of the corporate and federally funded research is grossly distorted in its design and interpretation to support pre-existing pro-industry commercial goals. When research results are at odds with these goals they are typically ignored and suppressed. All of the federal food and health regulatory agencies are victims to various degrees – usually severe – of “regulatory capture,” i.e., instead of protecting the public they are routinely staffed and run by professionals with strong economic and professional ties to the industries they are supposed to regulate, and so instead they often promote and protect these industries at the expense of the truth and the public’s health. The less familiar the reader is with the details of such unhappy facts before reading this book, the more important and stunningly revelatory it will seem. For readers familiar with this terrain, Minger’s narrative is too often tedious and overwrought.Minger conveys the important fact that even well-intentioned system-bucking scientists like Colin Campbell, and many of the whole-food plant-based (WFPB) diet gurus, ignore individual differences that have obvious heredity bases and routinely ignore the deficiencies that their dietary regimens invite (e.g., A, B12, D3, K2, Omega3/6 imbalances). Both Minger and Chris Masterjohn have fruitfully critiqued Campbell’s scientific research online and Campbell has often been pompous and off-point in his responses. As someone who is an almost WFPB vegan, I too find Campbell’s universal prescriptions offensive. This is my second effort to go vegan and after a year on an almost WFPB my total cholesterol dropped from 178 to 126 while the critical Total/HDL dropped from 4.8 to 3.2. A friend who went 100% WFPB for the same period had her cholesterol stuck between 190-200 (but with a very good ratio of 3.0), while another friend has repeatedly felt tired and weak and when she “stuck to it” anyway experienced mild muscle wasting. So perhaps the point about individual differences – and Minger gives some genetic components that explain it – needs to be said again and again.Still, Minger wastes a lot of space. For example, she cites a study from Great Britain showing that longevity for vegetarians/vegans was no greater than that of the general population. But this result is sloppy and unfair since it includes what WFPB supporters correctly label “junk-food vegans” full of processed sugar and hydrogenated potato chips. More importantly, the vegan physician Michael Greger, M.D., addressed this study – and the then-recent death from heart attack of 63-year-old Jay Dinshah who had been a vegan for 40 years – in a 2003 video watchable on YouTube and pointed out how woefully deficient in B12 and how horribly imbalanced in Omega 3/6 these vegetarians were and how these deficiencies impacted cardiac health. So much of what Minger has to say is not especially new.But a major difficulty is that that time after time Minger reduces research results to confusing incoherence by imaging a possible counterfactual – another possible interpretation, or offering a counter-example. As someone trained in statistical inference and scientific methodology, I kept thinking that she should instead take the data and re-analyze it, or else look for other good studies that would resolve between competing interpretations. This she repeatedly fails to do – perhaps because as a very smart autodidact she lacks the training to do so, and perhaps because of a bias to reach no conclusions about which diets are generally best so that any diets that are free of refined and processed foods and oils will stand on an equal footing, i.e., WFPB, Paleo, and Mediterranean. To read Minger, one would not know that there is available evidence to choose amongst them.Minger’s bias is most clear when she discusses the Seventh Day Adventists of Loma Linda, California. These are one of a very small number of “Blue Zones” in the world where centenarians are found to concentrate, and overall health and longevity are remarkably common (male vegetarian SDA’s aged 30 live 9.5 years longer than non-SDA males and SDA females live 6.1 years longer). Their religion urges them to eschew meat, fish, eggs, alcohol, tobacco and coffee. In "The China Study," Campbell notes that even the Adventists who eat meat do so moderately but that “the Adventist vegetarians are much healthier than their meat eating counterparts” with half the rates of obesity and diabetes. (p.150) Dan Buettner in The Blue Zone elaborates this theme. Vegetarian Adventists live about two years longer than their non-vegetarian cohorts, and had half the risk of developing heart disease. (p. 129) Thinking that the saturated fats in meat might be the culprit, the researchers studied nut consumption (with a high unsaturated/saturated fat ratio) and to their surprise found that Adventists who ate a handful of nuts five or more times a week (i.e., whole food vegan-sourced mostly unsaturated fats) lived two years longer than those who ate very few nuts. (p.130) Since nuts are loaded with Omega 6 fatty acids, this pushes the Omega 3/6 ratio in the unhealthy direction, but apparently the natural vegan source and the process by which the body assimilates them has a very different effect than when they are consumed from highly processed commercial vegetable oils. This is darned interesting data, so what does Denise Minger do with it? She tells a catty story about how the religion’s founder, Ellen Gould White, has her face smashed by a rock, went into coma that critics felt left her with a permanent traumatic brain injury and then started having visions “to abstain from all forms of flesh food.” (p.190) But what about the research data you ask? When Minger finally gets around to that she writes:"Indeed, even within the Adventist population, stark [sic] differences emerge between folks of different meat-eating persuasions. One analysis found that Adventists following a true vegetarian diet consumed less coffee and doughnuts, and more tomatoes, legumes, nuts and fruit than the more liberal meat eaters." (p.194)This is plain silly: this is not a research finding, but almost a definitional difference between the two groups. And that is all Minger says about the relevant data outlined by Campbell and Buettner showing superior health for vegetarians within the Adventist community – in other words she entirely ignores it, which is hardly intellectually honest, especially after mocking its founder. She might have contacted the Adventists researchers and learned whether the meat-eaters were eating unhealthy cuts of processed bologna, for example, so she could argue for grass-fed buffalo meat as good-for-you, but she did not. The only effort she makes to take account of the data is to argue that meat-eating Mormons live as long as Adventists, and that those who abstain from alcohol, tobacco, tea and coffee have far above average health, but this does nothing to address the data she wishes to dismiss. In fact she underscores that the non-meat-eating Adventist strict vegetarians with better health consumed “more tomatoes, legumes, nuts and fruit than the more liberal meat eaters,” and not junk donuts, which is just the WFPB vegan’s point, isn’t it?Such biased exposition is commonplace. Being an advocate of fleshy foods that raise blood cholesterol levels, Minger attempts to dismiss the relevance of serum cholesterol to total health by strongly suggesting that the research supports the conclusion that higher levels of serum cholesterol are associated with greater longevity (pp.106-111). A simple web-search of “cholesterol and mortality” finds as the first choice a 1994 article entitled “Low Serum Cholesterol and Mortality, Which Is the Cause and Which Is the Effect?” Minger never considered the question of what caused what in her book, and this article concludes that death from catabolic diseases lowered total cholesterol (TC) prior to death, not that lower TC increased total mortality. Although the association of lower TC with death is genuine for those whose cholesterol fell prior to death, “By contrast, there was no significant increase in all-cause mortality risk among cohort men with stable low TC levels. Nonillness mortality (deaths caused by trauma and suicide) was not related to either TC change or the average of TC levels in exams 1 and 3.” So again as so often Minger is very careless, not skilled enough, or not intellectually honest.Minger, like Chris Masterjohn, is enamored of the nutritional philosophy of Weston Price: that what matters most is eating (organic) nutrition-dense foods no matter what the type. I too find it appealing, and some of it is self-evident. But when she speaks of Price’s study of healthy primitive societies, there is not a word as to the longevity in these communities; she reports only his observations of their splendid teeth, dental arches, and general good health – at least in those communities that enjoy it; as she notes others are sickly and riddled with parasites. But the fact that human beings over the course of evolution may adapt themselves genetically to a variety of nutrition-rich diets of widely different types says very little about the benefits of a (mostly) WFPB diet vs. anything else for many (not all) of us. Nor does it suggest that a healthy Eskimo could move to the tropics and thrive on their local diet. And for those like my friend who cannot digest even properly complemented vegetable protein and must have fish, we’ve found that she does best when the rest of her diet is as close as possible to a WFPB diet (with idiosyncratic modifications along the way).The final great disappointment of Minger’s book is her conclusion that each of us must find his or her own path, as though little or nothing has been learned from nutritional research except what to avoid. As someone who has worked hard to do so, I still recommend a WFPB diet – warts and all – as the starting point with the obvious caveats to those with Celiac disease, gluten intolerance or gluten allergies, etc., with all the necessary supplements, and with the liberty to add occasionally some vitamin and mineral-rich animal flesh for its possible benefits. With the arguable exception of the Loma Linda Seventh Day Adventists, there are no vegan centenarian blues zones – but most of the centenarians eat very little meat, do eat primarily nutrient-dense and nutrient-rich WFPB fare, with the right smattering of very nutritious non-vegan exceptions.

I wish this book had been written earlier, and I completely agree with her conclusions, they are what I've come to over the past few years. My story is similar. Get the book, read it and avoid the trouble I've been thru. For more read Eat the Yolks. Eat the Yolks: Discover Paleo, fight food lies, and reclaim your health  and  Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It I lost my health doing what I was told. More whole grains, move to a vegetarian diet, low fat. The recommended way to eat circa the late 80's on. As a young wife and mother I wanted to do best for my husband and family. As an RN I followed the health guidelines of the day to the letter.Fat was demonized so non stick Teflon and spray PAM was in. I bought that and "healthy" soft margarine. Fat was supposed to make you fat and the worst fat of all was animal fat so I bought and served only lean meats and less of that as we as a family moved to a vegetarian then a vegan diet.We ate "clean". We ate lots of whole grains, I ground the wheat for the bread we ate myself. Fresh ground whole grain wheat. We ate beans, lentils, legumes and soy. We moved away from dairy and towards soy milk, soy cheese and soy burgers.We got worse. We all gained weight, our teenagers developed migraines, and their allergies got worse. Rashes, asthma, frequent infections. I got sick, fatigued, and my joint pain was agonizing, my husband got high blood pressure, high triglycerides and high cholesterol. My thyroid finally blew up like a balloon.I started to read and began to suspect soy and legumes might be part of it. Finally I quit all legumes and my joint pain cleared up. We managed a while but other things got worse, and I developed a worsening of my auto immune symptoms. I had surgery to remove half my thyroid, and suffered with worsening female issues (fibroids and endometriosis) and a subsequent hysterectomy. While treating each problem helped, it didn't bring me back to full health. Puzzling. But when I reintroduced a test of soy, my joint pain came back right away, and my remaining thyroid swelled up and became painful. The same thing when I tried various other legumes like lentils, peanuts and dried beans. So soy and legumes were out altogether. Still tried to stick to low fat, and the weight continued to climb for both my husband and myself.Along the way I bumped into Anne Barone's Chic and Slim books  Chic & Slim: How Those Chic French Women Eat All That Rich Food And Still Stay Slim  and started to change my diet some more. I added in butter, cheese and eggs and got a little better and lost some weight but I was struggling with fatigue, falling down frequently, ataxia (walking like a drunk) and intermittent numbness. This was the first part of the puzzle for me, why the French eat so much fat and stay slim.Finally I found a book by Gary Taubes on Why we are fat and in it I found out that my auto immune problems may have been CAUSED by the low fat, whole grain diet. I went on the low carb diet, did more reading, lost weight, gained energy and began to see some hope. At that time I noticed that most of the French diets were lower carb, more Zone like. I also noticed that much of the whole French and Italian, Greek, Med diet research seemed awfully different as the reporters defined it, versus what I was actually seeing in cookbooks written before the low fat craze. These cultures PRIZED certain fatty meat cuts, and the ones that relied more on beans and pastas tended to have more belly fat in their photos. So the slimmest of the Italians and Greeks were eating like the slimmer French.I read about the China Study, it scared me because who was I to believe? Obviously everyone from Jane Brody in the eighties to the recent China Study said you should NEVER EVER consider a high fat and protein diet lowered in carbs.But my husbands cholesterol and tri glycerides and weight were coming down and so was my weight and my cholesterol and my blood pressure which had all rocketed up in the last years of "healthy eating".So with fear and trembling my husband and I continued down our carnivorous ways. We enjoyed our way thru some fun French and Italian cookbooks, leaving the bread and pasta behind.I noticed that when grains were out of the picture my body and his worked better. (our kids are adults now, and finding the same things).When I cut gluten out, my childhood eczema that had persisted thru adulthood disappeared completely. I had a genetic test for celiac, and I'm not a celiac, but I sure have problems adding gluten back into the mix. The eczema comes right back and my body attacks itself a lot more with the auto immune stuff.I'd love to say I'm back in perfect shape but 30 years of damage aren't erased. I'm better than I was but I think some of the damage is permanent. I will be on a lower carb gluten free almost paleo but with high fat dairy for life. So will my husband. Our kids are able to tolerate a bit more of the whole grains and legumes but they too are off the low fat bandwagon and eat meat along with the fat that comes with it. Our lab work confirms this is a much healthier eating pattern. The cholesterol ratio, triglycerides and our weights are all in the healthy range even though I still struggle a bit with fatigue and auto immune problems. my BMI is still higher than I'd like but I've lost 30 lbs and kept it off for years now. I'm down from a size 24/26 to a 14-16. I am completely off cholesterol and blood pressure meds and my blood tests show completely normal values now, while my husband is on a much lower dose of a statin and blood pressure medication. His BMI is now in the normal range, and the dr is very happy with his labwork results. He is no longer trending towards type 2 diabetes, his blood sugars and triglycerides are completely normal. Both of us have lost the worst of our belly fat with some still to lose.I hope if you are reading this review, that you will get this book, and thoughtfully and carefully examine what she is saying and save your own health and the health of those around you.

esta muy bueno el libro y resistente grande y llegó en erfects condiciones

Libro che consiglio a chi nutre interesse per l'argomento alimentazione e salute al di là di posizioni o convinzioni "filosofiche" o "integraliste", così comuni. L'autrice cerca di fare una sintesi oggettiva e personale, di buonsenso e agevolata, senza pretese accademiche, della sterminata e spesso contraddittoria letteratura disponibile sull'argomento. Mi sembra ingiusta e sprezzante la stroncatura di altra recensione: vero, l'autrice non e' un medico ne un ricercatore ma sappiamo bene come l'argomento sia spesso "terreno infido" anche per loro...e quanto spesso i medici, come scritto, non abbiano preparazione specifica sul tema o addirittura abbraccino, loro stessi, prassi di pensiero, terapeutiche o diagnostiche prive di fondamenta scientifiche solide.

eu ja tinha lido esse livro no e-book,comprei em capa dura para estudo.E um livro brilhante ! Um interessante relato histórico como a fraude e lucro dominam tudo em medicina

The book starts by answering the question "Is USDA food pyramid healthy ?" Spoiler in the title : it isn't. There are some extremely interesting testimonies from nutritionists who designed the first pyramid, and were horrified by how the government changed it to favorize wheat consumption due to the cereal lobby - the recommandations went from 2-3 servings a day to the 6-11 in the pyramid we know, with all the damage it had caused in the last decades.While this first part is very informative, the rest of the book is even better : if food pyramid isn't healthy, then what is ? Thus starts a long journey where "common" knowledge meets scientific studies, empirical lifestyles meet fad diets, all with their pros and cons analyzed by Denise Minger in a remarkable example of objectivity. Extremely solid from a logical point of view, entertaining to read with light-hearted humor, I strongly recommend this book.

A pesar del título en ningún momento es un panfleto en contra de la industria alimentaria, la posición dominante en la ciencia -la de que todas las grasas animales son malas y causan infartos- o de un partido político en concreto. Expone sus ideas de una forma nada dogmática, está minuciosamente documentado y escrito con mucho sentido del humor.Se divide en cuatro partes:- En la primera cuenta como nació la Pirámide Alimentaria de la USDA tal y como la conocemos, y como en su origen era diametralmente opuesta (moderada en grasas saludables, con verduras en la base de la pirámide y con los cereales y la carne de animales criados a pienso en la parte alta). Hace un análisis de como la política económica post Gran Depresión influyó en la creación de la pirámide y de cómo los productores de cereales, carne y leche presionaron para conseguir una pirámide más favorable a sus productos. Esta parte se puede hacer un poco farragosa para un lector poco familiarizado con la política americana, pero no deja de ser interesante.- En la segunda parte se centra en la ciencia: en cómo nació la obsesión por lo desnatado, el cero por ciento grasa, los primeros hallazgos científicos sobre el colesterol. Hace un análisis muy detallado, desde el tipo de estudios científicos más usados cuando se habla de nutrición y salud, sus limitaciones y sus sesgos. De como la hipótesis de Ancel Keys acerca de que es la cantidad de grasa que ingerimos la que causa las enfermedades cardíacas ha influido en la Pirámide Alimentaria y de como nacieron las grasas trans y las margarinas (la consideerada entonces "sana alternativa a las grasas animales")- En una tercera parte compara las tres grandes dietas que se enfrentan a la actualidad a la pirámide alimentaria y a su concepto de que es básico tomar a diario 5 o 6 raciones de cereales en forma de pasta, pan y arroz: las dietas Paleo, Vegetariana y "integral basada en vegetales", destacando qué puntos tienen en común y recomendando cómo conseguir que cualquiera de estas tres dietas se acerque lo más posible a una dieta ideal. En esta parte incluye ideas como la de que la calidad de las grasas es importante y de que su cantidad ha de ser adecuada a las necesidades individuales (una idea que se está repitiendo en la dieta Primal y las reformulaciones de la dieta Paleo,  B005NHQ2NY la dieta Atkins , etc) o que es mucho más interesante el valor nutricional de los órganos que de la carne que proviene de músculo (algo que resulta revolucionario en un país en el que ya ni el marisco se sirve con cabeza, como recordaba la autora de  B00D5XYHEY Primal Moms look good naked - La cuarta parte es la bibliografía. Si, un 25% de todo el libro es bibliografía. Como he dicho, está muy bien documentado.Conclusión: Me ha parecido una lectura amena e interesante, pero no ligera: no es el típico libro que te ventilas en una tarde (tanto dato y tanta política puede llegar a saturar) B005NHQ2NY la dieta AtkinsB00D5XYHEY Primal Moms look good naked