Transcription
[Music] hey guys so I saw a graph the other day that I knew I had to make a video about. uh, I know, a video about a single graph sounds incredibly boring, so I'll try to liveen it up with some jokes and sound effects, and I promise you won't regret watching this video.
now, this graph is incredibly important because it single-handedly explains the health crisis that we are currently in. it's also incredibly important because it will forever immunize you against the false narrative that is being used and spread around the low-carb world to justify their ridiculous idea that we need to be eating even more meat and even more fat than we already are.
so, this is the narrative that they're using. let me know if you've heard this statement before: "it is becoming clear that the low-fat recommendations of 30 to 40 years ago have failed. we tried low-fat, and we are sicker than ever. it's time to embrace fat and stop eating carbs in all forms."
this is the idea propagated by Gary Taubes, Dr. Peter Attia, and countless other low-carb gurus. these "quote unquote" experts even tell us to limit fruit and definitely limit or exclude whole grains and beans. they claim that Americans listened when the government told us what to eat, and it didn't work. I mean, look where it got us: two-thirds of us are overweight and obese, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, all on the rise. it's got to be those whole grains.
we need some clarity, and enter the graph. this graph was put together by the incomparable dietician Jeff Novick. seriously, do yourself a favor and look him up. I will also post a link to the data he used so that you can fact-check this yourself. this is data from the USDA about what we eat, calorie by calorie, today compared to 1990 and 1970.
wait, before I show you that, let's look at those government recommendations we all followed so diligently. so here is the 1992 food pyramid, the inaugural version. we were recommended to eat between five and nine servings a day of fruits and vegetables. the basis of our diet was meant to be starches. note, this does not mean processed carbohydrate foods like chips, sugar-sweetened cereal, soda, or etc.
if we dive into greater detail, there are recommendations specifically for whole grains. the new MyPlate suggests we make at least half of our grains whole. we are also recommended about a half a cup of beans, a cup of leafy green vegetables, and to limit our overall and saturated fat intake as much as possible.
okay, back to that graph that totally validates that we listened to this advice. right off the bat, we see that we are eating an extra 500 calories per day. woah. but where did those calories come from? remember, the low-carbers would have you believe that we cut our fat consumption and replaced it with carbohydrates, and especially sugar. so between 1970 and 2010, we ate an additional 34 calories from sugar. okay, so not healthy. we'd obviously like to see that number go in the opposite direction, but I'd hardly say that an extra 34 calories is the cause of the obesity epidemic.
moving on, we ate 190 more calories from flour and cereal products. okay, that is significant, and it's important to note that 90% of the grains we eat in this country are refined. so like white flour in processed foods like cakes, muffins, white bread. uh, it appears that we are eating more carbs, and not the good kind. but that's not what we were told to do by the recommendations. no one ever said eat more processed carbohydrates.
surprisingly, dairy consumption has only increased 27 calories since cheese consumption has risen 300% over this period. I did expect this to be higher. I guess we just stopped drinking milk and started eating cheese instead. also not a healthy swap, as cheese tends to concentrate the saturated fat and cholesterol and has lots of sodium. calories from meat and eggs is virtually unchanged as well.
but before we let meat off the hook, remember we eat more of it than just about any other country on the planet. also, the heart disease epidemic predates 1970, and the dietary guidelines council in the late '70s actually tried to word their recommendation as "eat less meat." industry had a panic attack and lobbied hard to get the wording changed to "eat more lean meat." wait, how did we go from saying "eat less" to "eat more"? this is [Music] America.
what isn't surprising is that our fruit and vegetable consumption is virtually unchanged. 26 more calories from fruit, four fewer calories from vegetables. either way, a total of 206 calories from fruits and vegetables is nowhere near the five to nine servings recommended. to get there, we'd need more like 500 calories or more from these foods.
okay, so we didn't listen on the whole fruits and veggies thing. this leaves us with calories from added fats and oils. today, we consume a whopping 224 extra calories from pure fat sources. explain to me then how we tried low-fat and it didn't work when dairy and meat consumption was relatively constant and added fats increased dramatically. I'd say we went high-fat and high-carb, and that's high processed carb. in other words, we went high processed food.
a little more info: this graph doesn't show beans are counted in the vegetable category. can anyone guess how many calories we average per day? between seven and 11 calories. that's that's like two beans. only 4% of Americans meet the minimum. 99.5% of Americans don't meet the minimum for whole grains, and 96% don't meet the minimum for leafy green vegetables.
plain and simple, we did not listen to government recommendations, never once tried a low-fat diet, and are just as far off as ever from what the science suggests we should be eating, which is mostly whole plants. eating healthy is simple: cut out processed food, reduce animal products, and dramatically increase whole plant foods. oh, and one more thing: don't believe the hype. doubling down on meat and fat is a bad idea. embrace carbohydrates when they come from natural, whole plant foods.
[Music] hey, so I saw all right.