The US, the Swiss & the Food Pyramid Nobody Told You About - So Frickin' Mini

Hey, Donna, do you have 10 minutes to chat with me today about food pyramids?

Megan, with you?

Always.

And when it comes to food pyramids?

Always, always.

So.

Yes, please.

Yeah.

So a couple months ago, I saw a video by one of my favorite diabetes educators, Dr. Jason Fung.

He's out of Canada.

If you haven't watched him yet, please go watch him.

I love the way he explains things.

And he is super unpretentious, which I think is making it a much better video.

Anyway, he did a whole video on the new food pyramid, and he called it the food pyramid Lie.

Why We Got Fat, which there's a ton of other resources and books out there that talk about this, that explains why in the US Specifically, we got fat really fast.

When this food pyramid and the.

And the recommendations from the usda, the.

US Drug Administrate Drug, US Drug, and something administrative.

Food and Drug Administration.

Yeah, whatever.

Anyway, so this is an audio podcast.

So we're looking at some pictures.

Go look for the old US Pyramid, the new US Pyramid, but we're also going to spin inside there because we're in Switzerland.

We're going to talk about the Swiss food pyramid, because the US Is not the only country that does these stupid food pyramids.

So the old food pyramid, that is like the food pyramid I saw when I was in school, like, exactly.

We grew up on it.

Right.

So we have at the way bottom, we have like bread and grains basically taking over your diet.

Above that we have fruits and vegetables, which starts to make a little bit more sense.

Above that is meat and dairy.

Dairy, Right.

And then above that is like fats and oils and stuff like that to use sparingly.

So what we've been told for so many years that you need to live off of grains, breads, carbs, and mostly empty carbs because that's what you mostly find in the stores, mostly find in restaurants.

Right.

So, yeah, that's the old one, which was always very disappointing.

Yeah.

So the new one is actually an inverted pyramid.

So now whole grains are still at the bottom, but the.

But it's at the tip now, if you want to visualize this.

Right.

So the amount should be the least.

Yeah, yeah.

Sparingly.

And the dairy, protein, healthy fats, vegetables and fruits are basically all one big group above that.

Right.

So if we look at it, we're saying maybe whole grains should be 10, not even 10% of your diet, whereas literally everything else that is not processed should be the rest of your diet.

Right.

And so the, the, the compare of this is you Know, the old one was heavy focus on carbs, like you said, especially refined carbs.

And fat and meat were bad.

Right.

And Dr. Fung explains.

Yeah.

The hormonal response to refined carbs.

As you know, if you've been a long time listener to this show, we've talked about this many, many times.

Refined carbs, glucose spikes, insulin spikes, fat is stored.

Right.

That's like the basis of that.

So apparently the new food pyramid is, of course, the emphasis shifts to whole foods while reducing ultra processed foods.

Which I'd like to then bring in the Swiss one.

Because the Swiss food pyramid looks.

Okay, first of all, it's a regular pyramid with a wide base at the bottom.

Right.

So if you look at it quickly, it looks like the old food pyramid.

But there's a surprising difference in.

In the Swiss food pyramid, the bottom one is liquids.

Liquids drink water.

Mostly it's water.

Fizzy water.

Regular water.

Water, water.

And then we have coffee and tea.

Two teas, one coffee.

Yeah.

And then.

And then the next one on the Swiss is vegetables and fruit.

And they say vegetables more than fruit.

Yeah.

Right.

And then the third one, which is kind of where meat and milk was in the old US One, that's where they put the refined carbohydrates, breads, grains and rices.

And then they have dairy.

Looks like dairy.

And.

And they're showing the grains and the proteins.

Yeah, well, the proteins are like, they're showing one piece of chicken, one egg, and then the rest is like tofu, fish and legumes.

So they're kind of also more emphasizing on, unlike, you know, meat, they're more emphasizing on protein.

Just general protein, veg, vegetarian, vegan, and meat.

That is true.

Because even on the new one, even on the new food pyramid.

Yeah.

US Steak, you see a whole cheese.

It's only animal products.

Yeah, mainly you don't really see legumes or anything.

Protein, plant based proteins.

That's interesting.

I didn't notice that the first time.

Yeah.

And then they have like nuts and oils and fats.

And then the very top, they have processed alcohol, chocolate and chips, like.

Right, yeah.

Or crisps, wherever you're coming from.

So they actually have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 layers of the Swiss food pyramid.

And the old US food pyramid had four layers.

And the new food pyramid has two layers.

Right, exactly.

I mean, and I have to say that, honestly, Megan knows this.

Just before we jumped on the call, I didn't even know there was a Swiss food pyramid.

I thought it was like a general thing or like, you Know the US.

Taking over everything, saying that your kids did not learn this in school.

In the school they might have, but I taught them differently anyways at home.

So they were like, oh, we learned some nonsense at school today.

And I was like, let's correct that.

No, I don't remember them showing that to me.

And if they did, I probably cringed and walked away.

So I don't remember that.

I blocked it out of my memory.

But I.

This is the first time I'm looking at it and it almost.

It makes me.

I'm so conflicted here because I'm feeling uncomfortable and happy at the same time.

Like, I really love.

What's the uncomfortable part?

I love seeing.

Well, let me just start with a positive.

I love seeing the liquids and water and stuff and fruits and veggies being really highlighted.

I think it is very important and I think really most people do not drink enough.

So that is true.

But the fact that again, and.

And this comes from lobbying, I'm sure, especially in, in Europe and in Switzerland, everything is based on carbs.

Like, everything is based on carbs.

There's so many carbs in their diet.

So it makes sense to me that it's that way.

But I feel like having the protein be such a small part of the diet, it just makes me uncomfortable because I know now how important it is on.

In a daily diet.

So I just feel like if someone is really following that, as we talked about the US and the old pyramid, they might be suffering for different reasons and shameless.

So if you could redo the Swiss pyramid, I'm hearing that you would probably replace the third layer, where they have carbs, where they have all the breads and stuff, with the protein to make the protein a bit more.

And the carbs, like kind of in the same category as with dairy.

No, I would probably.

No, honestly, if, if I had to make a food pyramid, let's say we take the Swiss one, I would definitely make liquid.

And then.

And then fruits and veggies.

Yes.

And then the next one would definitely be proteins.

Yeah, any proteins, honestly.

But I would make dairy a much, much, much smaller slice of that.

Nobody really intake dairy.

No, we don't need dairy.

And a lot of people get very inflamed by dairy.

A lot of people cannot digest it properly.

And it's not just the lactose.

And a lot of people go for lactose free, which is a lot more processed.

So there's a lot of loss in translation there.

A lot of the yogurts that we buy in the store are not actually cultivated yogurts or not live cultures.

And we think we're eating healthy stuff.

So that's my problem with dairy specifically.

But also make sure that there is a lot of.

Of other proteins there, and nuts and seeds should be in the protein category as well.

Okay, we have like one and a half minutes left.

But I think the.

The thing that we really didn't touch on is why the government should be telling us anything about how we eat.

This is also like a major topic of, you know, they shouldn't.

Honestly, that's the.

Right.

Because.

Because we.

You.

You meant.

You touched on it.

Lobbying groups, especially in the U.S. this is super big in the U.S. i have no idea how this works in Europe or in each European country.

But if you have the dairy lobby coming at you and they're like, hey, you should highlight yogurt and, you know, cottage cheese or whatever, and somebody is paid enough, they will make that a recommendation.

And I think that is bullshit.

So, yeah, we don't really have time to totally dive into that, but I feel like that is a topic that I would love to grab, wrap my hands around.

I don't know.

But like, in 30 seconds, what is your perspective on governments giving us guidelines on food?

I mean, to me, government equals money equals lobbying.

Just directly.

I mean, fat was vilified in the 80s because of lobbying.

People stopped eating avocados and butter and started eating margarine and more carbs, which was devastating to the.

The population's health.

So I really think it has to be a completely different entity that is responsible for that.

And it needs to be a very diverse group of scientists and doctors and health experts that should be responsible for that.

So that's my two cents.

All right, so, listener, if you want to know more about this or if you're interested in comparing and contrasting other food pyramids or let's, you know, getting maybe somebody on to talk about how they develop these food pyramids.

That would also be interesting for me.

So if, if this topic is interesting, do let us know if you want a full topic.

A full episode with maybe a guest on.

So I think we gotta leave it there today.

Donna, thanks for talking to.

With me about food pyramids.

Anytime, Megan.