669. Who Gets to Shape the Food Pyramid? And Should the Government Decide What You Eat?

Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Way the World Works. Today, I want to talk about food, which is one of my favorite topics because I love to eat.

So let's talk about food in terms of the food pyramid, because we have a new one and it's kind of hilarious because if you look at it, it kind of just looks like the old one flipped upside down, which is I can't think of a better symbol for government, because it's like basically do the opposite of what they tell us to do, because that is essentially what the new pyramid looks like. So why do we even have food pyramids at all? Well, basically, the government will come out every now and then with their nutrition guidance. And as much as we'd like to believe that maybe that won't influence everything, it kind of does.

So what their guidance, what the guidance they give out actually impacts the school lunches. It impacts how even free market, how private companies, what they choose to manufacture in their food. So, for example, in when I grew up, there was like a war on on fat in your food.

So it was like instead of butter, people were eating margarine instead of, I mean, olive oil now, which everybody uses on everything because it's that we've learned that it's a healthy fat. You didn't use that back in the 90s. Everything was fat free.

And what was funny about this is we thought that if we were eating something fat free was automatically healthy. And so I remember my mom would get there were snack wells was the brand you would get these these cookies that were filled with sugar, mind you, and not very like it was all processed food, but it was fat free. And if it was fat free, it was healthy.

And so we had little packs in our lunches. And that was that was how we live, because fat free back then equaled healthy. So I want to talk more about what this war on fat looks like.

And so you had this demonization of eggs and butter and whole milk and meat. And guys, I'm not kidding when I say you had a war on these foods because there was like an egg white craze where people were throwing out the the yolks of the egg and just eating the egg whites, right? That a butter they were eating margarine instead of whole milk. They were eating or drinking skim milk, which let me just say, as somebody who grew up as in a skim milk household during this war on fat, it is disgusting.

I didn't even know. I remember the first time I had a sip of whole milk. I was completely blown away because I was like, hold on.

This tastes like something skim milk just tastes like water. It was it was absolutely horrid. And so all these things were really demonized.

Even meat was it was demonized. And so what did that lead to? Did that mean again, we were all eating healthy food? No, it meant we were eating the snack was cookies. I told you about we were eating highly processed food.

We were eating food that was designed to taste good, but not be good to our bodies. But they were labeled as smart choices because it wasn't fat. And so you had this spin on things.

And I mean, that's going to put us in a situation where now, you know, I think we know now that processed food is not great for us. And so we're getting sicker because food, what we eat does impact not just our physical health, but our mental health, too. And so you have this this problem that's escalating and escalating through the years because we were being told by by the government what we should eat.

And when we look at the food pyramid, then what you actually see is that it's not really a reflection of health, right? We're not really looking at these great guidances based on a bunch of nutritionists that got together and debated and had a really, you know, engaging discourse about what is healthy and how we stay healthy. No, a lot of it has to do with money and power and and government subsidies, which industries were getting money from the government and who they were in cahoots with. And somehow they got a better spot on the food pyramid.

And that might sound crazy. But, you know, in in the guide to a true conspiracies, we talk about these things where people say conspiracy and it makes something sound crazy. Right.

But there are examples of true conspiracies all around us. And one of those really is nutrition and government guidance for this food pyramid. And I know I want to make sure that I'm kind of checking, checking myself here.

I know you must be thinking, OK, well, why should we listen to a new government that did a new food pyramid just because it's flipped upside down? It's not what the other government said. You know what? Isn't that the same thing? And absolutely, you should absolutely always be questioning everything. You should never take anything at face value.

So, yes, you should be questioning that. Now, I do tend to think and this is my own opinion. I do.

I am pretty optimistic about the way our our health guidelines are going right now, as far as as a bigger emphasis on eating healthy fats, on maybe eating less processed food. That's something that I think is a is kind of a no brainer. And so I tend to think that that that's a just logically a good decision.

But I also tend to think that you are each responsible for what you put in your bodies. And, you know, a diet that works for me might not work for you. And so as we're talking about this, yes, I am.

I am a little bit excited about the direction that I'm seeing government going now, but also science is ever changing. Maybe years from now, we'll look back and say, oh, that one wasn't right either. We need to amend it.

In fact, my favorite example of this, because I want to make sure I make it clear that not governments can be wrong. People can be wrong without there being like a like an evil slant. Right.

So sometimes science is just changing. There was a time during the Victorian era where people were putting radium in food and makeup because they thought it was cool that it could make you glow in the dark. You had glow in the dark, you know, cocktails at these fancy clubs where it would glow in the dark and lipstick that would glow in the dark.

And people thought that was so cool, not realizing that they were literally being poisoned. And so it wasn't that the manufacturers of these, you know, clubs where they sold these drinks or the people who made the lipstick, they weren't trying to kill their consumers. That's bad for business.

They simply didn't know. And so there is that, too. But when we look at the old food pyramid again, I'm not saying that the government set out to keep us sick and unhealthy.

But what I am saying is there there were some suspicious things because there there were a lot of incentives given to industries, industries through subsidies that impacted what was allegedly healthy and what was not. And so that that's kind of what I want to get into now. So how did this come to be? Well, now we get to the part of our story where we talk about subsidies.

So what is a subsidy? A subsidy is when a government helps a certain industry or business basically helps them financially. And when I say helps them financially, what does that mean? It means they give them money. But as we all know, the government doesn't have any money of their own.

They have our taxpayer dollars. So we are subsidizing whatever the government chooses to subsidize. So instead of a farmer, you know, earning money directly from consumers who want to buy their product, they're also getting money from the government.

And so it's it's incentivizing them to to use more of this food. So when the government is subsidizing things, what the farmers realize is now cheaper to produce certain things. And that means that they're cheaper to buy.

And that means you're going to find them in food more often. And one of the worst culprits of this is going to be corn. All right.

There's a lot of corn subsidies in our in our government. And that led to a rise of high fructose corn syrup. Now, we know that sugar is not great for us.

But if you think sugar is bad, the substitution, this really, really sweet artificial sweetener, high fructose corn syrup, that's what you're going to find in like sodas. That's what you're going to find in a lot of sugary foods that are on the shelf today. It's going to be high fructose corn syrup.

And it ended up having horrid, horrid consequences on our health. And a big problem with this is sometimes people are saying like, oh, don't worry, there's no sugar in it. But there was high fructose corn syrup, which is actually I mean, sugar is not great either.

But let me tell you, high fructose corn syrup was really not great. And people were eating all of this extra sweetener, this extra, you know, it was making our our food taste better. So we were eating more of it.

But here's the thing about high fructose corn syrup. You actually start feeling hungry again, really, really fast. And then you have this like energy.

People talk about sugar rushes. You get this this spike in energy. But then what happens if you go up? You have to come down.

So then you get these horrible energy crashes. You get weight gain, which is, you know, not good for for anybody, because when you when you gain more weight and you become like obese, then you're also setting yourself up and you're making yourself more vulnerable to get other diseases. And when things like, you know, flu season comes around, you're more vulnerable to that.

So that's another negative of high fructose corn syrup. And then there were all these other health issues that didn't exist before. And there's even been links to to cancers.

And so high fructose corn syrup is this horrible thing that started becoming a part of so much of our food. And it all came down to the fact that the government was subsidizing the corn industry and it became really cheap to manufacture. And so you can see right there that the government is incentivizing poor nutrition, right? They're incentivizing and creating a society where actually far less healthy than we were before.

So we should always be skeptical when it comes to listening to the government's advice, because it doesn't always come from a place of caring about us. It comes from from a place of of these hidden, you know, incentives of power, of money and of people thinking that they know better than us, this trust the experts. And that, I think, is one of the biggest takeaways from the food pyramid, because it teaches us a lesson that we already knew as far as other areas.

Right. Education. You know, we've been told that the public school one size fits all model is the best way to go.

OK, well, then why are literacy rates so low? Why does it attack? Why does public education often attack personal merit and instead try to reward people because of, you know, immutable characteristics like their skin color or their gender medicine? We know this, right? We saw what happened during covid when we were told to trust the experts and don't do your own research and only listen to what Dr. Foushee says. And, you know, one day he said, wear a mask. The next day he said, don't wear a mask.

So there's all these these times we were told to trust, you know, the experts. Economics is another another big thing where we're told that this Keynesian economics, this this collectivist economics, for lack of a better term, that that is the way to go and it just simply isn't. And so all these things show us that we shouldn't trust the government just because they tell us something is correct.

We shouldn't trust the experts just because that is what we are told to do. So then what do we do? How do we know when to take advice and when not to take advice? How do we know what to do? Well, there are there are ways there are some questions that we can ask ourselves to try to get a better hold on a situation. The first thing we can do is to ask ourselves who is benefiting from this advice.

Is there somebody profiting from this? Is there like a motive for why, you know, corn would be the thing that everybody is pushing? And then, you know, that a question that kind of falls right after that is what incentives are shaping it? Are there subsidies in there? You know, let's look at that vaccines or something like that. Is there a company that's getting paid a lot of money to push this out really quickly? So what are these incentives and why have they arisen? Who's benefiting from this? And then, you know, what happens if it's wrong? Who is paying the price? And when it comes to our health, when it comes to our nutrition, we each pay the price. And, you know, looking back to when the food pyramid was invented and looking at the health issues that we've had since then, it's hard to not question.

Well, you know what? I'm not going to say it's hard not to question. I think there's there is absolutely no reason to believe that it isn't the nutrition guidelines we were fed, because no matter what, you know, high fructose corn syrup or these processed foods were doing to us, the government kept telling people that it was fine because it was fat free or was fine because they said it was fine. And unfortunately, there's a lot of people that just take the government at what they say.

And I would like to believe that isn't true. But COVID, I think, showed us how quickly people were willing to just believe whatever they were told. And so now looking at, you know, back to the food pyramid, we have a society of very unhealthy people.

We have chronic illness. We have, you know, cancers. We have all these things and not everything is preventable.

Some people do just get sick. But let me tell you, if you really want to do everything you can do to avoid having those problems, eating healthy is really, really important. And that doesn't mean following the advice of the government.

It means doing your own research and figuring out what works best for you. Now, again, I know I sound like a hypocrite saying don't trust the government and then saying, actually, I kind of like this food pyramid. I do kind of like this food pyramid.

I think this is a rare instance where I think the government has taken the right approach to to nutrition. But again, things change. We might learn something new.

So moral of the story is when a government expert tells you something, question it. And if you want an example of somebody like, well, the government has never steered us wrong before. You can point them in the direction of the food pyramid and everything that has happened as a result.

So we will leave it there. As always, don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast. And until next time, I will talk to you later.