How Did Nutrition Advice Get so Backwards?

Which is more healthy: Lucky Charms or Eggs? According to the Tufts University Food Compass rating system, Lucky Charms is significantly better than eggs, meat, and cheese.

Mar 10, 2023

Are These Food Guidelines for Real?

I sometimes get myself worked up into a little frenzy over food guidelines because of how they harm people. At times, people pat me on the head and say, “Simmer down there little missy; it’s just food.”

But what if this overly-processed, high-sugar carbage is actually a slow poison, negatively affecting people’s brains? Dr. Palmer’s research appears to support this hypothesis for at least some people.

In light of that, let’s see what the astute researchers at Tufts University’s School of Nutrition found. They developed a Compass Rating System that gives food scores enabling you to generate a graph comparing different foods. The generative data comes from here.

Let’s see what advice Tufts University has for some sweet little mom of toddlers who wants what’s best for her kids and so looks at the University dons with their degrees in nutrition to help her decide what would be the healthiest foods to give her children.

I went through various stages of the grief process after viewing this Food Compass rating system.

My first stage of grief, as often happens, centered around denial. Perhaps this food rating system was supposed to premier on April Fool’s Day, but someone left the job and the new hire released it early not knowing it was a joke.

But then it seemed like a lot of research to go into an April Fool’s joke so I next reasoned that perhaps after all the research was done, someone accidentally pushed the “reverse all data” button. Once this happened, it was too hard to undo the damage so they just published it with all the scores reversed because they didn’t have enough department funding to fix it.

But this theory didn’t seem plausible when I found out that General Mills is a Silver Member supporter of the nutrition school and Pepsico (which owns subsidiaries such as Quaker), is a Platinum Member supporter. (For a full expose on this topic, read the excellent investigative journalism done by Nina Teicholz here). With such illustrious sponsors, surely the budget couldn’t be a problem.

But finally, I approached the acceptance phase of my grief and realized that it may actually be possible to be a researcher at a top school of nutrition in the “scientifically advanced” country of ‘Merica can believe that highly-processed grains sprayed in glyphosate and coated in thick layers of high-fructose corn syrup (such as Frosted Mini Wheats) are many times more healthy for a human being than an egg which contains vitally necessary protein and essential fats, and nearly every vitamin and mineral necessary for the human body. Did I mention this study found egg consumption lowers the risk for diabetes?

It’s been a long process of full acceptance and I admit, and I have my relapses into denial. I often feel what C. S. Lewis describes in That Hideous Strength when Mark is subjected to the “objective room”: that a raucous round of laughter would have put the whole thing into perspective.

But I’m not able to have that round of laughter—yet. My dad’s life was cut short. Such guidelines, however well-meaning, trickle down and shape society’s imagination of what foods are healthy.

Here’s another chart generated from the Tufts guidelines:

Why is almond milk given a 95, and whole milk, which has vital fat, protein, and vitamins, given a 49? So many questions…Textured vegetable protein? Does anyone realize how highly processed that is?

Is this rating system based on something about saturated fat and cholesterol causing heart disease? Except wait, that has been debunked by countless studies such that even the American Heart Association has quietly removed the statements from its website. (It’s funny, though. The AHA somehow forgot to hold a press conference to tell the public that their last 60 years of recommendations about fat and cholesterol were based on false data. I guess someone just dropped the ball there. Meanwhile, the echo of the lie that fat and cholesterol cause heart disease continues to reverberate far and wide.)

Oh wait, are these guidelines based on the idea that meat causes colon cancer? But the poorly designed epidemiological studies that showed only a 1.1 statistical significance and were not repeatable when not funded by cereal companies have now been debunked.

So what is the reason now that meat, butter, and eggs are scoring at the bottom of these charts?

I wouldn’t be so upset if this were some isolated gibberish. But this continues to be the dominant health info that most people, including mothers of children, receive. And such ideas become so embedded into people’s imaginations that they no longer need a medical explanation. It’s just, “Well everybody knows that cereal is good and meat is bad for you.”

But recently it’s turned from, “Meat is bad for you” to “meat is just bad.” No explanation needed. But why is it bad, if it’s ethically sourced, and if it’s grass-fed? Other than hurting Bill Gates $50 million dollar investment into plant-based “meat” products, I can’t find any scientific data behind why the foods in the red part of these charts do any harm.

This all comes home when you realize there are only 3 macronutrients in the world: fat, protein, and carbs.

The cereal companies pulled a fast one on us by demonizing fat and protein. If those two things are bad, all you have left is carbs. Go ahead and give those little children a bowl of Recess Puffs because it’s low in saturated fat and cholesterol (see Reese’s in green below, scoring a 71) even though the human brain is made of fat, and children desperately need the kind of fat found in eggs, butter, and milk for their brains to develop, and cholesterol is found in every cell of the human body and is vitally important for development. (See this study from the Journal of Pediatrics stating: “Deficiencies in the amounts of these long-chain fatty acids in the diet during infancy may affect the maturation of the central nervous system, including visual development and intelligence.”)

I just love how chocolate Lucky Charms gets a rating of 69. It just barely missed being green by one point! But that’s okay because chocolate cheerios made it to the green and scored a whopping 71.

From following these guidelines, you may get diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune diseases, and clinical depression, but Mmmm, the sweet taste of addiction.

I read a great line yesterday. Someone wrote: “Any food that you’ve ever seen advertised is a food you shouldn’t eat.” It has a lot of truth to it, although there’s probably been a time or two that I’ve seen chicken, beef, and dairy advertised, but not often.

In conclusion: I have to admit, the Tufts’ Food Compass does offer the public some value—if you pretend that it’s opposite day. This strategy also works well with the government food pyramid: turn it upside down and everything starts to make a whole lot of sense.

Maybe that’s what they intended all along—just checking to see if you were paying attention. If you’re not, that’s okay, because Big Pharm’s got a pile of pills with your name on it. Mmmmmm, pills. Mmmmm, textured vegetable protein.

Until next week, do the opposite of the nutrition advice you’ve always heard and you’ll be doing pretty well!

Leslie Taylor

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