The food Pyramid, a device of promotion that many of us saw in grade school prior to the 2000’s. In fact, the original version was authored in the 1970’s in Sweden, but wasn’t codified and used in the US until about 1992. However, It’s inception actually goes back to World War II and the food rationing that was rampant in the US and Europe at the time. In fact, it started out life in Northern Europe as something called the food pie with 7 “slices”. It was eventually invented as the food pyramid by a representative of the Swedish food cooperative in 1974 and later adopted by many nations of the world, with some cultural variations. Encyclopedia Britannica published a fairly complete article including much of the debate surrounding it (see article link below). However that article fails to address some of the lesser known points, which are covered below.

To begin with, the food pyramid is really only a tool of propaganda designed for proper rationing, instead of actually providing actual scientifically based and researched data on what would constitute proper diet. It was created by government officials with the support of “big food” in order to market food to the masses. Most of that “food” is laden with artificial ingredients (take a good look at the ingredient list for a loaf of bread, or that TV dinner, or even that box of cheerios and you will see much that shouldn’t be in there). Many of those artificial ingredients are really not all that safe for human consumption, yet the marketing speech indicates that these “ingredients” are in such small amounts as to be mostly harmless. Ever hear of cumulative damage due to over exposure?

In any case, the human body is optimized to handle a wide variety of foods, but like all such systems, too much of one thing (like grains and cereals) can be a pretty bad thing.

Now, before the FDA changed the food pyramid to the new (as of 2005) food plate, they had inadvertently demonstrated another concept: solar energy efficiency in food production. The shape of the pyramid shows this rather handily, as the base is made up of grains, cereals and fruits (2 layers). The further up the pyramid you go, the less the efficiency, as it takes more of the base elements to actually produce meat, poultry and other high quality proteins. It is because of this that the FDA, in consultation with large food production entities (such as Tyson Foods, Nestlé USA, Pepsico USA, Coca-Cola, General mills, Archer Daniel Midlands, cargill, Kraft-Hines, Mars Inc., Among others, insist on lobbying the government to have their way. Think about it folks, just how much is spent on lobbying government officials yearly? In that lobbying, some protectionist policies have come to be, including subsidies on sugar and other products. A fair number of these companies often produce Sugar or artificial sweeteners for much of their product lines, which pretty much makes the American diet the worst on the planet. Interestingly enough, the food pyramid doesn’t even mention sugar, except where fruits are concerned (as fruits tend to be pretty high in naturally occurring sugar). So, when you get down to it, not only is the food pyramid a propaganda tool, it is fully incomplete, which really begs the question: what constitutes an actual healthy diet plan?

1. Encyclopedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/science/food-pyramid
2. top 10 food companies in the US (ESS Feed): https://essfeed.com/the-largest-food-companies-in-the-usa/
3. “Revealed: the true extent of America’s food monopolies, and who pays the price” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2021/jul/14/food-monopoly-meals-profits-data-investigation
4. “Questions remain about Big Food’s influence on the new dietary guidelines” https://civileats.com/2021/01/28/questions-remain-about-big-foods-influence-on-the-new-dietary-guidelines/