The Health Series: Nutrition Part 1 - Research, Studies, and Lobbies

 

 
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Hello friends, this is Babae!

 

I am starting a new English series to discuss all topics regarding health, as next week, I will be ending the Raspberry Pi series with the final part - installing Kodi.

 

As I age, I had begun taking an interest in health and fitness in the recent years. During the ongoing COVID panademic and lockdown, I've had more time to research on the topic and incorporate my learnings into my daily life. I am not a health professional so feel free to Google and fact-check anything I share with you.

 

It seems that new studies are coming out regarding nutrition every few months, and sometimes these new information challenge what we thought we knew. It has become very difficult to navigate the plethora of information out there regarding nutrition. What is good for us? What is bad for us? What to eat? How to eat?

 

There is a reason why there is so much conflicting information from studies, and that reason is funding.

 

When you read any article about a new study and its findings, always check who is funding the study. It might seem preposterous that funding matters because "science is science". How can the result of science change depending on funding? Well, with small sample groups, and flawed methods, you can find data to support any hypothesis. Agriculture is a huge industry, much like tobacco. You may live in a town where there are cows roaming on green pastures. These farms may be family owned, but they are not where most of your food comes from. Do not confuse the number of farms to the amount of land occupied. 72% of farms control only 8% of the world farm land. 1% of the farms are larger than 50 hectares but control 65% of the world farm land. This is much like wealth distribution, the top 1% owning 40% of the wealth, and the bottom 90% owning only 25%.

 

The agriculture industry has many associations representing specific group interests - the meat association, the diary association, the sugar association, etc. The members of these associations are usually the large corporations that own much of the farm land. Just like big tobacco, these associations fund studies that favor their products, and to lobby for regulations that help them turn a bigger profit.

 

An example of the influence big agriculture has on the daily lives of Americans is in Dietary Guidelines (the food guide) that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) puts out every five years. The food guide is developed by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, whose members often have conflicting interests through their association with food and pharmaceutical companies.

 

The food guide forms the basis for decision-making when schools, military, and other federally funded programs determine what to food to serve. It is also used by health care professionals and educators, so you can imagine how prolific the information becomes. What is inside Americans' refridgerators and on their dinner tables is heavily influenced by the food guide.

 

Over the past decades, the committee has recommended the consumption of milk, cheese, meat, and eggs, while members are affliated with big agriculture. On the 2000 committee, for example, "members had past or present ties to: two meat associations; four dairy associations and five dairy companies; one egg association; one sugar association; one-grain association; five other food companies; six other industry-sponsored associations; two pharmaceutical associations; and 28 pharmaceutical companies" - Linda Carney MD. You have to wonder: how much of the food guide is based on science, and how much is based on money? And wait, why so many pharmaceutical associations and companies? We will try to answer that in a future post.

 

Let's take a few steps back and look at the history of the USDA and the Dietary Guidelines. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the USDA into legislation. The purpose was for the department to take care of the country's agriculture safety and economy. At times, farmers may receive subsidies for their crops and products to be more affordable to the people.

 

At the end of the century, the USDA began to take interest in nutrition and funded their first study. At the time of the study, there was very little understanding of nutrition. Vitamins as we know today were referred as mineral matter. The recommendations of meat, carbohydrates, and milk reflect the US agriculture landscape at the time. The only behavior recommendation is to not over-eat.

 

In the 1930's, over-eatting during the great depression was not a concern but rather the lack of nutrition. The food guide was then focused on how to eat to be properly nourished. This was exceptionally important for children as a filfth showed signs of malnutrition. The implementation of the Dietary Guide at the school level also meant that the eating habits acquired by these children in their youth will be carried into adulthood.

 

In the 1940's, the food guide had identified seven food groups called Basic Seven. They are:

 

1. green and yellow vegetables,
2. oranges, tomatoes and grapefruit,
3. potatoes and other vegetables and fruits,
4. milk and milk products,
5. meat, poultry, fish, or eggs,
6. bread, flour, and cereals,
7. butter and fortified margarine

As you can see, these food groups are quite arbitary and are not mutually exclusive.

 

In 1955, President Dwight Eisenhower had a heart attack, which brought attention to the rising number of coronary attacks in that decade. The Seven Countries Study began in 1956 and examined the diets of the US, Finland, Yugoslavia, Netherlands, Italy, Greece, and Japan to identify the cause of the growing cardiovascular epidemic. The study was published in 1978, and lead to the Hassle-Free Daily Food Guide in 1979. The Seven Countries Study found that the consumption of saturated fat increased the chances of cardiovascular disease, and therefore in the Hassle-Free Daily Food Guide, a caution was issued against fats, sweets, and alcohol.

 

Earlier in the 1970's, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) was introduced. Sugar canes are hard to grow in the US as they originate closer to the equator but corn was abundant. A Japanese research group found a process to convert some of the glucose in corn to fructose. Fructose tastes sweet, just like glucose, but does not trigger the brain to respond to the hormone leptin, which regulates appetite. In other words, you do not feel satisfied after eating, which causes you to eat more. Fructose is also processed differently than glucose. It is processed in the liver and the process produce fat. In excess, it causes non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. As with alcohol, fructose is considered "empty calorie" because it contains no nutritional value, meaning there are no vitamins, minerals, protein, fibre, or essential fatty acids.

 

Because of the Hassle-Free Daily Food Guide condemns the consumption of saturated fats, Americans were flocking to foods that are labeled as low-fat. These food are often full of carbohydrate and food companies started loading HFCS and sugar into their products. So while people think they were eating low-fat and healthier, they were actually eating more calories and gaining more fat.

 

The obesity rate continued to climb and in the 1990's, the USDA supplemented the food guide with activity advise for general health. Exercise was seen as the way to combat the growing obesity epidemic. The general rule is to match caloric consumption with caloric expenditure, and if you want to lose weight, should spend more calories than you consume.

 

Only in the mid 2000's was attention brought onto fructose as the culprit of the obesity epidemic. Low-fat, which everyone once thought was a healthy diet, became a lie and left everyone to rethink his or her way of eating. This led to the rise of the low-carb high-fat Keto diet, the low-carb Atkins diet, the paleo, and many others. Coinciding with the proliferation of the Internet, you can imagine how the abundance of adverse information brought confusion among people. It feels like there is a new diet trending every year.

 

Over the past few decades, the food guide has taken the form of a wheel, a pyramid, and now a plate but we still haven't conclusively determine the optimal diet. For that matter, I don't think we have even conclusively decided on a shape.

 

The reason I led you through the history of the USDA and the Dietary Guide is to illustrate the effect money has on policy, and policy on lives. In 2016, it was revealed that the sugar industry had paid scientists in the 1960's to blame fat for the rise of cardiovascular diseases, while they capitalize on popularity of sugar infused products for over fifty years. Sugar is just one of many agricultural industries and if it had such impact on our health and lives, what other misinformation have we also adopted?

 

In March of this year, the Canadian government released its 2020 food guide and it highlights only four points:

 

• Have plenty of vegetables and fruits
• Choose whole grain foods
• Eat protein foods
• Make water your drink of choice

 

As you can see, there are no food groups or servings suggestion. This suggests that there is more than one way to fulfill our nutrition needs and that different people may reach the same health goals with different portions. We will explore this next week.

 

If you have any ideas for future topics for this series that you want me to cover, let me know in the comments below.