Maybe they should just shut up and not publish any damn guidelines.

[wombat_socho]

Egg on Their Faces by Steven Malanga, City Journal Summer 2010:According to Scientific American, growing research into carbohydrate-based diets has demonstrated that the medical establishment may have harmed Americans by steering them toward carbs. Research by Meir Stampfer, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard, concludes that diets

Comments

[darksumomo]

And then there's the mismatch between what the USDA recommends and what Congress subsidizes.

[wombat_socho]

I'd be interested in seeing a more detailed breakdown of the meat/dairy subsidies between meat and dairy. I know that there are milk price supports, and of course the government cheese program is infamous, but do they really subsidize ranchers and feedlot operators in the same way they do corn growers and the ethanol scammers?

Good on you and your wife for cutting back on the grains. You can make definite progress on the BG and weight fronts by watching your carbs; it's appalling how it doesn't get talked about aside from occasional references to the Atkins and South Beach diets.

[haikujaguar]

Yeah, our "low-fat" diet craze (leading to high-carb diets) has been really really bad. :P

Me, I need a lot of protein. Like RAR ME PRIMITIVE ANIMAL lot. If I eat that with a lot of vegetables, I feel like a human being. If I eat the majority of what's sold in restaurants and grocery stores, I feel like a crumbling building.

[wombat_socho]

Ditto. I also notice that the higher my BG gets (even when it's in the 110-120 "normal" range) my brain feels sluggish. :(

[haikujaguar]

I notice different things with the different bad foods: rancid oil makes me feel kind of queasy/weird, flour/wheat/etc makes me feel bloated and sluggish, and sugar makes me seriously mood-swingy/energy highs and lows-ish.

I really can't tolerate much of any of those things. And yet they're addictive. It drives me crazy that eating well is so hard, but we're surrounded by cheap pasta, frozen rolls, breaded food... argh!

And then people get upset at me when I say 'maybe the reason you're unhappy/having energy problems/having depression' is partly nutritional. :P

[wombat_socho]

And then people get upset at me when I say 'maybe the reason you're unhappy/having energy problems/having depression' is partly nutritional. :P

I'm fortunate to be surrounded by friends and family who know that food can have drastic effects on their mood and energy states. My brother and son both were ADD when they were young, and had to stick to the Feingold diet (no artificial colors/flavors, no tomatoes/citrus fruit) to keep their heads screwed on straight. As for us diabetics, getting a clear head from lower BG is a happy side-effect of the reduced carbs in the diet.

All you can do is put the information out for people; if they don't eat it. well, you've done what you can.

[tokenfanboy]

You want guidelines, here is your guideline: "Everything in moderation" Simple, effective, worked for a couple thousand years. People just need to relearn portion control after super-sizing everything for the past 30 years.

[haikujaguar]

The problem with 'everything in moderation' is that modern foods are supercharged with highly refined versions of natural compounds, so they hit your bloodstream like heavy drugs even when you don't eat much of them. Our bodies didn't evolve to deal with things like high-fructose corn syrup or even basic refined white sugar or flour.

Now if you mean 'everything in moderation' in a diet that's mostly composed of real foods, rather than over-manufactured ones, I'm right there with you. :)

[wombat_socho]

Well, we're a lot more sedentary as a nation than we used to be when 90% of the population was living and working on farms. Still, it's a good starting point.