You will always hear discussions on what type of food you should be eating. This discourse comes from the government, schools, and influencers as they try to inform you what they believe is healthy. The issue with this is that it seems that everyone doesn't have the same view. Therefore, the overall question is, "How did this confusion start?”
Dietary guidance first arose in the US in 1894. The government started publishing guides to your health but none of it seemed to stay continuous, which was due to world events at the time. These guidelines became more established in 1956 when the government issued the four basic food groups. The groups were milk, meats, vegetables, and bread.
According to this standard, if you had all these foods in a day, you were having balanced, healthy meals. In some cases, this can be good, but this standard lacked portion sizing. Therefore a “healthy” meal could be a gallon of milk, a 20-pound steak, two pieces of white bread and one broccoli.
Eventually things got somewhat better, and the government started recommending portion sizes. They even consulted industry professionals to help their decisions. However, these industry professionals worked in certain fields, so they chimed in to make their product more profitable. How these people did it was by making their product seem healthy through low fat and low-calorie labels.
This was the rise of the fat free kick in America. Though this change seems healthy on the surface it disregards all the healthy fats and carbs our body's need. This led to unhealthy diets resembling practical starvation. All while none-of it was true. In a “healthy” two percent fat milk it is 2% fat per the whole jug of milk. This makes you believe that in the normal version it would be 100%, but in reality, it is around 3.4% fat for the whole jug. A small difference that generated millions for many industries who did/do the same thing.
The most modern version of these health guides is a program called My Plate. This new program has semi-proper portions and introduces proteins and fish. Of course, though all of these programs have misconceptions this one's biggest flaw is the new innovative way for fruit consumption, fruit juice. Even though fruit juice has all the same vitamins it has more sugar than an average soda.
There are a lot of lies in the food industry but a good basic guide for a meal was established by Harvard. They covered healthy fats by replacing milk with olive oil (not to drink of course). Their recommendations had good portions and emphasized fish.
In recent years the government has fixed these falsifications by creating the Dietary Guidelines for Americans website. However, this will not undo the already deep-rooted unhealthy eating that has placed the US in an obesity epidemic. Understandably the government cannot force everyone to eat healthy, so the key is to take things into your own hands and use what the government is giving you. As Well as to truly understand that this field has many different views from experts and healthy eating can be different for everyone.
Reese M. Ford
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