Friday, June 3, 2011

Kneejerk Stupidity on the food plate

Swerve Left: Latest food-lobby recommendations:
"As with the food pyramid, the recommendations are patently ridiculous and probably owe more to corporate lobbying than sound nutritional science. The veggies and protein are all fine, but do people need a significant amount of fruit in their diet. Maybe (assuming that we aren't talking about just bananas and oranges). And grains? For most Americans, this is Wonder bread or perhaps a cupcake at Starbucks. How many people eat healthy grains (for example, whole-grain wild rice) as their main staple? And even if they did, how much grain do overweight Americans really need? The inclusion of 'dairy' is also stupefying. Nobody except baby cows really needs dairy. Of course, excluding it would piss off a farming lobby in some key states, so it's in there."


Of course if the poster had taken 10 seconds to go to the site that hosts the pretty pictures he would have found a wealth of information that would have answered his questions and more. But I am sure that wouldn't have made for as fun a rant.

The problem with trying to get anything across in a graphic is that you are distilling a lot of information and that means that you have to THINK a little when interpreting it in a deep way. Karlo seems to be pissed that there aren't footnotes on the damn graphic that describes in detail why it was created as it was. That is just being cranky for the sake of being cranky.
And don't get me started on the "nobody except baby cows needs dairy" bullshit. Milk is an effective method of getting a lot of nutrients in a convenient form and if you are not lactose intolerant then you will do just fine drinking it.

1 comment:

  1. But this doesn't correct the ketchup as a vegetable fiasco, by putting it in fruits where it "belongs."

    ReplyDelete

Not moderated but I do delete spam and I would rather that people not act like assholes.