Part II
Ben: Well, I remember the original food pyramid didn't specifically say "eat less candy," it just had candy, sugars, and sweets on the lower end of the spectrum, as the products you should eat the least of, but it still gave "permission" to eat them. So when and why did the USDA make this leap from, "Eat lots of food, because that's what our culture needs right now," to, "Eat 
lots of food because our industry needs lot of money?"
lots of food because our industry needs lot of money?" Mike: This happens essentially because of the cross pollination of the USDA and the industry it is required to regulate. There's an old saying in terms of being an observer of the way governments work. Any organization that regulates an industry, if it exists for long enough, eventually becomes an extension of the exact industry that it was supposed to regulate. The USDA today is really just a marketing arm of the industries that it's supposed to regulate. It's the marketing arm of the farmers of America, the cattle ranchers and the dairy industry. In fact, this isn't even debatable. It is part of the mission statement of the USDA to promote the interests of agriculture and these various industries in the Untied States. That's in its charter, so we shouldn't be surprised when this group -- this government group -- tells us that we should eat more of all these foods and ingredients.
The mistake, historically speaking, is allowing the USDA to have any say whatsoever in terms of dietary guidelines or nutrition, because nutrition is not compatible with the idea that everybody should eat more of everything. That is not nutritionally sound. What the USDA says, and what many companies say -- especially junk food manufacturers, soft drink manufacturers and so on -- is that any food can be part of a healthy diet. That's their statement. That's their common defense. If you became overweight drinking soft drinks and eating Big Macs at McDonald's, and you try to sue McDonald's, the restaurant's defense will be, in part, based on the idea that McDonald's food can be part of a healthy diet. Now, I disagree with this because if you look around, every company is saying this. You have 400 food manufactures lined up, and they're all saying, "Our foods, soft drinks, donuts, candy bars, sugary breakfast cereals and margarine with hydrogenated oils can be part of a healthy diet." By the time you have listened to everybody, you have a system of food that can kill you. Every one of them has said, "It can be part of a healthy diet."
Ben: Very few of them talk about how it can ever be part of a healthy diet.
Mike: Well, the only way it can be is if you have a perfect diet, you're perfectly healthy, you exercise and you get outstanding nutrition. You avoid all the dangerous ingredients, but once a week you drink a soft drink or once a week you have a Big Mac or something like that. Yes, that's not going to kill you, you see what I mean? But nobody does that.
Ben: Right. That's not what people consider a diet
Mike: No, not at all. So the idea that any food can be part of a healthy diet is really absurd. It's just a defense. The USDA food guide is essentially promoting this idea that any food can be part of a healthy diet. There's an interesting book called "Food Politics" by Marion Nestle. Marian used to work at the USDA, and she was part of the process of creating the original food guide pyramid. She has fascinating accounts of how this was done. For example, they would get information from doctors and nutritionists, and they would decide, within their own group, that they were going to have a statement that said, "People should consume no red meat." That's a nutritionally sound position.
Ben: Right.
Mike: But then, as soon as industry got word of that, lobbyists came in, and there was a lot of political pressure applied. Senators, congressmen and congresswomen were suddenly getting calls from their constituents, which included cattle ranching companies and meat packers, and they were putting pressure on this group at the USDA, so this original statement that said, "People should eat no red meat" went though this really interesting evolution. They decided to tone it down, and they changed it to say, "People should eat less red meat." Then they decided to change it even further to say, "People should eat more lean meat." So the science supports the idea that people should eat no red meat or very little red meat if any, but the ultimate statement that came out of the USDA was, "People should eat more red meat, as long as it's lean meat."
Ben: Then it's "safe."
Mike: Right. So this is how the scientific truths of health, nutrition and dietary choice get distorted and twisted by the political process -- the corruption of the collusion between the USDA and the very companies that it's supposed to be regulating -- and end up becoming a statement that is a great disservice to the health of the American people. This is how the entire food guide pyramid was created, and this is why it needs an honest alternative. The Honest Food Guide that I've created here is the honest alternative. Again, it's HonestFoodGuide.org, and you can download it free of charge. This is the only guide that gives you an unbiased view, with no under the table corruption, of what you should eat and what you should avoid.
Ben: What does the Honest Food Guide have that the current, or even the previous, USDA pyramid didn't have, other than honesty?
Mike: Yes, honesty is one thing. It was not created by any industry, and I personally have no financial gain whatsoever from anybody for creating this guide. It's not just that I'm not getting money from these food companies. I'm not getting money from anybody. This is a non-revenue item. It's created entirely for the purpose of public education, which is one of my core missions. So, again, I have no financial benefit from it. But that's not what makes it useful. It's useful because it has the courage to stand up and say what you should eat less of. Again, this is what the USDA refuses to say. This is actually an inverted pyramid, and on the left hand side is the disease side, and on the right side, it's all health. You can look at the list of foods that are in this food guide, and you can decide really what kind of health outcomes you want as an individual, and then you can choose to eat those kinds of foods.
So, if you want to be diseased, for example, you go to the left side and say, "Okay, let's read the list. Let's eat a lot of red meat, carbonated soft drinks, donuts, high-salt canned soups, snack chips, candy bars, crackers, sugary breakfast cereals, processed foods, milk and dairy products and so on." It's easy to get diseased if you eat all that. You can give yourself cancer in no time if you really go down that path. On the right hand side, you have all the foods and ingredients that create health. Again, this is a recipe for health, so we list all the foods -- raw fruits, vegetables, berries, healthy oils, nuts and seeds, fish, certain sea vegetables and molasses, for example -- and we even mention things that aren't food, like sunlight and water, because they are essential nutrition. Basically, this is a recipe. We even show pictures here of an unhealthy person on the left eating all the disease foods, versus the healthy food on the right. Now, what's interesting about all of this, in contrast to the USDA's food guide pyramid, is that many of the food items that we put on the disease side are foods the USDA promotes.
Ben: I notice that milk is on the diseased side. For decades, we've been told that milk is healthy and that it promotes strong bones and is, essentially, good for you.
Mike: Absolutely. The dairy marketing industry has been very successful in getting across this highly distorted and completely unfounded message that human beings should be consuming a liquid produced by the mammary glands of a furry creature with four legs, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. No nutritional sense. It's completely nonsensical that we have any need whatsoever for this juice that comes from an animal. You don't see people going out there and milking horses.
Ben: Or dogs.
Mike: Right. Would you drink hamster juice?
Ben: No.
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