Didn't read the thread so forgive me if the following as already been said
The food pyramid you are presenting isn't wrong. The problem is your take from it. This is also why i prefer the food wheel instead of a pyramid so it is less confusing.
So what are you misunderstanding about the food pyramid:
- Drink milk 2-3 times /day; meat everyday
- This isn't how you interpret the categories of the food pyramid. you are supposed to eat 3 portions of different components inside that category. For example you should eat a slice of cheese at breakfast, 1 cup of milk at tea and a yugurt before bed.
- Meat is the same thing. You are not supposed to eat meat everyday, just 2-3 times per week. For example : monday you could eat fish at lunch, beans at dinner. Thursday could be grilled chicken at lunch and peanuts at dinner.
- Fats and oils are essential for a healthy diet.
- First-> the word essential in nutrition means that your body can't produce them. For most fats and oils your body can produced them, the only fats it can't produce are usually found in fish (this means that it isn't in that fat oil sweets category). This means that everything that is essential is needed for healthy diet and if you don't ingest them normally there is some sort of repercussion. This also means that the fats and oils you are thing about are not essential!
- While fats and oils are needed for a healthy diet there are 2 problems: On one hand most people prefer fats and oils that ara heavily processed (margarine, vegetal oils, cakes,etc) thus are extremely associated with metabolic disease. On the other hand these types of food give a lot of pleasure to eat so revoking the "right" for people to eat them will make people have less compliance with the healthy diet.
- Understanding what fats oil and sweets means
- This category is for vegetal oils, cakes as well as dressings like mayo. Not for the "healthy fats" for fish, olive oil and meat liver.
- Seeing drinking milk every day as bad
- In this forum (assuming ages between 16-30) are the right group to actually drink milk every day. It is in these ages that we build peak bone concentration that will prevent diseases in life. This is specially important for the ladies. If any lady isn't drinking milk everyday during 13-30 they are missing their biggest chance to evade osteopenia .
In short the food pyramid by itself isn't wrong it is the lack of knowledge that stops people from understanding it. Just like most things in the medical world it is distorted by common knowledge instead of being read like the "scientific document" it is.
Side note that my plate is an aberration and needs to be destroyed from the face of the earth. If i had 15 mins to explain that plate I'd quit my job and go back to a different specialty. No way am i ever deal with that thing.
