State of Nutrition 2006: Fact or Fiction: A case of Blindness
Myth has been used throughout time to convey meaning to life and its varied experiences. In addition myth or stories have provided cultures with their heroes, villains, and codes of conduct. The fable has been used to entertain children of all ages and to influence the collective on a variety of causes. We all love a good story. Stories can be false or true, and we love them all the same.
In recent times, story has been used for marketing products of all kinds. The earliest example of this is Ben Franklin who coined the phrase "an apple a day keeps the doctor away." Ben Franklin and his friend Thomas Jefferson owned apple orchards. Their interest in selling lots of apples was hardly based on any clear scientific fact, but on the profit motive. The clever use of poetry disguised the profit motive as scientific truth. Should one examine the nutrient value in an apple, they would find it lacking in fiber and vitamins of all kind.
Another way myth has been used to convey superiority is by association. Celebrities or sports heroes will endorse products by associating their beauty, success, or strength with a specific food use. Fear myths have been very successful in marketing food. An example of this is the myth that fat causes heart disease. Just as Ben Franklin created an image of apple being used to prevent visits to the doctor, fear is used to manipulate us to and from a variety of foods. The motive remains the same. Follow the money.
We can easily follow the money to one of the biggest nutritional myths of our time: the Food Pyramid. The Food Pyramid is based on the myth that fat equals cholesterol and cholesterol equals heart disease. There was a 1950s study that supposedly produced this conclusion, but has been disproved. However the low fat movement got its momentum from this erroneous study. Again and again, we are seeing how "scientific studies" become comprised by the profit motive.
Politicians and the food producers created the food pyramid as a distribution network. This network would provide food to those who could not afford it on their own. This pyramid provided a stream of distribution or an outline of how much of what got to whoever needed it. To be in control of the market, the interested agro-businesses bought their way into favorable positions on the food pyramid, the FDA, and the USDA. With the low fat myth well established in the cultural mind, association as scientific fact has construed the food pyramid to be healthy. Just like the apple a day myth, the food pyramid is deficient in essential nutrients like protein and fat.
The low fat movement or fad has been ineffective in curtailing obesity or preventing heart disease. Any advances in heart disease treatment today are because of the improvement in diagnostic tools not prevention. The prevention myth goes like this: eat right and exercise. What does that myth create in the collective mind? It creates the food pyramid, and the exercise mythology. Since the adoption of the food pyramid and the associated low fat movement obesity rates in all ages have doubled. People chronically exercise with no change in their weight. People refuse to eat fat, beef, or eggs and find their blood sugars and blood cholesterols become out of control. We are unable to "see" this because we are blinded by the myth.
Our collective loss of vision regarding the low fat myth has influenced our public and private institutions alike. Hospitals, schools, and business may use vending machines. The profits from vending machines provide kick back money to the institution that uses them, creating reluctance in curtailing items that provide the most money to the user school, hospital, or business. Unfortunately the item that produces the most amount of profit for all concerned parties is soda or pop. While we cannot blame just this one item for all our ills, it is just one example of the compromise made by institutions of all kind. This compromise allows items containing high levels of sugar to be ingested without control by anybody regardless of their age, or health status.
The most recent nutritional "witch hunt" has resulted in sugary soda pop removal from the vending machines of schools and some other institutions. Most people believe the myth that sugar is that white stuff in the sugar bowl. Because of our collective blindness on this issue, we are unable to "see" that all foods that contain carbohydrates are sugar. This nutritional witch hunt has resulted in the substitution of sugary juices, sports drinks, and granola bars, which contain more sugar than the vilified soda pop. Our collective distorted eye-sight regarding juice, sports drinks, and granola bars sees them as "healthy" which is something we all strive to attain even though we don't know or agree on what that means.
We have contrived another recent nutritional myth, that of the "impact carbohydrate." This myth was created to further blind us to the impact that carbohydrates have on our metabolism. By designating some carbohydrates as having little or no impact on metabolism, the public is led to believe that they are relieved of the burden of eating too much sugar. We don't want to accept that oatmeal, bananas, and skim milk contain as much sugar as a candy bar. We want to believe in organic whole food as being "healthy" and therefore of no consequence to our metabolism.
This wishful thinking food mythology has created a collective blindness in the ways we use food. Our collective blindness is at the heart of our serious health crisis we call "maturity onset diseases." With this kind of obscure title, we are led into the mistaken belief that as people get older, they just get sick. However, we now see the progression into "maturity onset disease of the young." Young adults and children are becoming diabetic, subject to heart disease, high blood pressure, and high content of lipids in the blood just like their older predecessors. Yet this fact is unable to reach our collective radar because we are continually distracted by the myths surrounding low-fat, high-carbohydrate foods.
The consequences of this inability to see, have infected all areas of our economy. Ford Company and Intel both site health care costs as the single highest expense in their production costs and the reason for the loss of jobs to the offshore manufacturers. 92 billion dollars was the insurance cost just for mature onset diabetes in 2003. These cases belong to people with jobs that have insurance benefits. This affects production costs, time lost at work, and long term disability. 800,000 new diabetes cases are diagnosed yearly with increases just a statistician's keystroke away.
With so much at stake, we can no longer afford to wait to take action. Yet we do. Wouldn't anyone try to avoid getting sick? Wouldn't the corporate culture try to examine how to improve their competitive edge in the marketplace? We all shout a collective "yes," but we cling to our nutritional myths that further our collective and corporate blindness. Advertisers are quick to jump on the newest myth in order to sell their products. These myths are cleverly aligned with the latest psuedo-science and fronted by a celebrity storyteller. Huge short-term profits are gained, but the long-term consequences damage our health and the health of our corporations.
We will miss the opportunity to prevent the diseases of lifestyle because we are so invested (corporately and individually) in our nutritional myths. Just like the days of Franklin and Jefferson, the profit motive has the final say.
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