So if the standard view of nutrition - eat less animal fat, eat healthy oils, drink low fat milk and eat more healthy grains - is right - why is this chart the way it is? Surely if we took the nutritionists' advice, we should all be thinner and more healthy now?
Is this because most of us disobeyed and ate more animal fat and red meat and less healthy grains?
Well we did almost stop eating lard. So what fats did take animal fat's place?
Now we see this - we have an answer. It is vegetable oils that have taken over. THIS is the fat that we eat today. We eat hardly any of the "bad" fat that they all go on about. But they still talk abut eating too much fat. So what fat are we eating? Its the fat they recommend!
And grains? What have we replaced all the calories we ate in animal fat with? With grains.
And what about all that red meat we should avoid?
And what about all the sugar we have been eating?
Note that sugar itself has been in decline. What has been on the rise is HFCS. This is in nearly all processed food. And what about soda?
All sodas are up. HFCS replaced sugar in about 1980. Also look at how "diet" soda has taken off. We thought that diet soda would help. And the result was? We got fatter.
And what about milk? Low fat is less fattening right?
So 65% of all milk drunk by kids is 2% or low fat. Is this helping?
So what is wrong with this picture?
We have done all that the nutritionists have asked us to do and we are fatter and more sick than ever.
Time for Nutritionists to think a bit harder. More here
It's hard for us all to give up these ideas. 35 years of the message being pounded into us has made the conventional wisdom the truth. If you are puzzled by why this has not worked, please give my book a shot. You Don't Need Medicine to get Healthy offers you a broad manual for how to take charge of your health - I cover diet, your body and your social world. I wrote it for people who now question the whole message of health. Do you wonder about diet? Do you wonder about exercise? Do you even wonder why medicine has not made us well.
If you have these questions, I may offer some new answers.