Lesson 1: Why Eat A Low-Carb Diet
Government Recommendations
Since we know that agricultural foods contribute to the diseases of Syndrome X, why do many nutritional authorities still recommend them? There are many reasons. Let’s start with where most of us learned about nutrition in the first place–in school. You probably spent time in a classroom with a poster on the wall that showed the four food groups or the food pyramid.
So where do our schools get those food group posters? The answer is from agricultural organizations who pay scientists to test their foods for nutritional value so they can market their products accordingly. Agricultural foods do contain nutrients, but they also contain anti-nutrients, or toxins, which we will discuss later. I am not suggesting that these organizations knowingly promote unhealthy foods, just that they don’t fully analyze them.
Agriculture was started with good intentions. We are only recently beginning to realize our error in assuming we could alter previously-inedible foods to access and benefit from their nutrients. As we track the cause of diseases to our modern diet, our reasoning is catching up to the instincts of our ancestors.
Another reason that governmental recommendations do not promote the paleolithic diet is because it cannot support our current population that sprung from the agricultural revolution. We will address this in a later section. For more information on this topic, see Appendix C in The Paleo Diet, by Loren Cordain, Ph.D.
The larger bodies of nutritional authority today are slow to make recommendations contrary to what they’ve established, but many responsible individuals are challenging the current recommendations. I will later provide a list of resources to the research of these responsible nutritional authorities.
Many scientists, nutritionists, and medical researchers are criticizing the USDA’s Food Guide Pyramid. They are saying that it is out-dated and misleading and that following its recommendations can lead to obesity and other health problems. Some of the criticisms include the Food Guide Pyramid’s treatment of all fats as bad, all complex carbohydrates as good, and all protein sources as equal. Followers of the pyramid recommendations run the risk of eating too little good fat, too much unhealthy carbohydrate, and too little protein. All fats, carbohydrates, and proteins are not created equal. Another criticism is the assumption that dairy products are essential. Dairy products are actually detrimental to the health of many people. Lactose (milk sugar) and casein (milk protein) intolerances are widely underdiagnosed, and yet they are given indiscriminately to our children in schools.
