Deadly Harvest: The Intimate Relationship Between Our Heath and Our Food (10 page)

The Bureau of Chemistry nevertheless continued with its work. By chipping away at its task, Congress passed a series of piecemeal laws. For example, requiring that food packages be “plainly and conspicuously marked on the outside of the package in terms of weight, measure, or numerical count” and banning labels that “may mislead or deceive.” In 1930, the Bureau of Chemistry was restructured into the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Little by little, the law was clarified on a number of fronts. In 1958, manufacturers of new food additives were required to establish safety, and in 1960 the manufacturers of new color additives were required to do likewise. Even these gains are not quite what Dr Wiley had in mind—he wanted food to be free of additives altogether.

That is the situation today. Manufacturers can make up a confection of anything they like, so long as no one ingredient is “harmful.” In all these matters, there is a further weakness: the FDA relies on the manufacturer’s own laboratory tests to prove safety. The confection can be totally without food value. Indeed, food can now officially be adulterated so long as it is declared on the label! In this way, hot chocolate, for example, has a poor cocoa content but a high level of cheap fillers, artificial colors, and flavors. Still, manufacturers have to be careful about health claims and they must declare somewhere on a label what is in the food.

Both from its founding as the Bureau of Chemistry and under its present banner, the FDA is supposed to be a guardian of the public interest. However, in many respects it gives the impression of being a watchdog that is conspiring with the burglars. This may be a somewhat unfair characterization, but the reality is that the FDA has to work in a highly political environment. The general public cannot therefore rely on the FDA’s protection from many of the dubious practices carried out by the food industry. We have to do that for ourselves.

GOVERNMENT EATING GUIDELINES

The story of this evolution of our diet is crucial to understanding why foods are having such a powerful impact on our health today. It took a very long time before it was recognized that many common diseases were linked to nutrition. One of the first was scurvy. The British navy used to lose more sailors to scurvy than to warfare until the 1790s. Then, a discovery of naval surgeon James Lind was put into practice. Sailors were fed lemon juice on long voyages and scurvy disappeared “as though by magic.” We now know that scurvy is caused by a deficiency of vitamin C.

Scurvy

Scurvy is a disease that has been known from ancient times, although it was rare. It became common among early Europeans who had to endure long winters in places like central Canada and among sailors on long sea voyages. Scurvy’s symptoms are swollen and bleeding gums, loosened teeth, sore joints, bleeding under the skin, slow wound healing, and anemia. If not treated, it results in death.

Also in the 18th century, it was found that rickets, a bone disease common in poor parts of cities, could be cured by the consumption of cod liver oil. We now know that rickets is caused by a deficiency of vitamin D. Pellagra is a disease that used to be common in the southern states of the U.S. where poorer people lived almost entirely on corn. In 1937, it was discovered that pellagra is caused by a deficiency of tryptophan, an essential protein that is unavailable in corn. It can easily be cured by eating small amounts of protein-rich foods.

The Japanese Navy used to lose 50% of its seamen to beriberi. They were eating a diet of polished white rice and not much else. In the 1870s, the Japanese reported that they could cure beriberi by feeding their sailors with some extra rations of vegetables and fish. We now know that beriberi is a disease caused by a deficiency of vitamin B1 (thiamine).

The list goes on, but the message is simple: for the last 250 years, more and more diseases have been linked to nutritional deficiencies. Governmental authorities have learned the lesson from this and, in a bid to improve the health of their populations, started to advise them how to eat. One can imagine the early messages: “eat citrus fruit to avoid scurvy” and “eat beans (which are protein-rich) with your corn to avoid pellagra.” There were early attempts to smuggle essential nutrients into the food supply by “enriching” some foods: vitamin D was added to butter and calcium was added to flour.

Magic Bullet Mirage

An unfortunate side effect of these discoveries was the encouragement of the notion of a “magic bullet”—that is, one simple cure for one simple disease. As we shall see, this is too simplistic. Most of our modern diseases are due to a complex interaction of many factors that are going wrong at the same time.

For over a century, the U.S. government has been interested in helping Americans to choose a healthy diet. The agency charged with this responsibility is the USDA. As early as 1894, the USDA developed the first food composition tables and dietary recommendations. However, they found quite quickly that, to communicate the ideas to ordinary folk, they needed to group the various foods into categories. Then, they could give recommendations for each category. This gave rise to the concept of “food groups.” These food groups have become entrenched, in various forms, in the way we think about our diets. For this reason, and because we will be using this concept as we move through the book, we will look at the story of food groups and how to interpret them.

The History of Food Groups

In 1917, the USDA established its first food groups: milk and meat, cereals, vegetables and fruits, fats and fat foods, and sugars and sugary foods. The government released their publication called “How to Select Foods” using these categories and called them “food groups” for the first time. These early recommendations used a breakdown of five food groups for the American food supply. However, when it was put into practice, dieticians and doctors found that it was too broad-brush and was easily circumvented. It was necessary to be more detailed, so, after due consultation and reflection, in 1933 the USDA published family food plans using 12 food groups. These subdivided the earlier large groups into more meaningful categories.

It might be thought that this was very clear. However, in 1942, the USDA issued a new food guide that reduced the number of food groups to what they called the “Basic Seven.” These were: green and yellow vegetables; oranges, tomatoes, and grapefruit; potatoes and other vegetables and fruit; milk and milk products; meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and dried peas and beans; bread, flour, and cereals; and butter and fortified margarine.

It is interesting to see what has changed. “Potatoes and sweet potatoes” have been lumped in with “other vegetables and fruit.” “Eggs” and “dry beans, peas, and nuts” are lumped in with “meat, poultry, and fish.” The “butter” group has been expanded to “butter and fortified margarine.” The word
lean
has been dropped from the category “lean meat.” The “other fats” group and the “sugars” group have disappeared entirely.

This does not look like a move in the right direction, but worse is to come. In 1956, the “Basic Seven” groups were condensed to the “Basic Four”: milk and milk products; meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dry beans, and nuts; fruits and vegetables; and grains. This time the “green and yellow vegetables” group has disappeared. “Butter and fortified margarine” has been dropped. “Oranges, tomatoes, and grapefruit” are lumped into the catch-all category “fruits and vegetables.”

This was a simplification too far. In 1979, the USDA issued the “Hassle Free Guide to a Better Diet.” This added a fifth group—“fats, sweets, and alcohol”—to the Basic Four. The guide recommended moderation in the use of the fifth group and also mentioned calories and dietary fiber for the first time.

Finally, in 1980, the USDA released the first Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The only change was to split the “fruit and vegetable” group into separate groups. So, now we are up to six groups. The USDA, for ease of reference, condensed their designations to: the Grains group, the Vegetables group, the Fruit group, the Milk (Dairy) group, the Meat and Beans group, and the Fats, Oils, and Sweets group.

Since that time, the USDA has issued revisions to its Dietary Guidelines every five years, but the food group classification has remained broadly the same. More recently, the USDA mentioned the use of “salt and sodium” and recommends moderation. Finally in 2005, the USDA issued the following redefinition of the food groups:

The only food group that the USDA changed is the “Fats, Oils, and Sweets” group—it is now just the “Oils” group. Where have fat and sugar gone? The USDA has created a new concept: that of optional treats. If your daily intake of calories on the conventional food groups leaves a shortfall, you can top-up with sugars and fats. By removing sugar and fat from food groups altogether, the USDA is placating the sugar, snack-food, soft drink, and confectionary lobbies, and it is also an attempt to feed consumers’ weakness for pleasurable and comfort foods.

In 1992, to give a pictorial presentation to the Dietary Guidelines, the USDA introduced the Food Guide Pyramid. This is a neat way of showing the
priority
to be given to each group as well as depicting the food groups themselves. However, as we shall see later, there are serious flaws both in the groupings and the priorities.

So, there is nothing special about the way our food supply is categorized today. Other categorizations have been used in the past and every few years the USDA reviews and makes changes to them. Most Americans will be familiar from their school days with the idea of food groups. However, depending on just what year they went to school, the food groups were different. No wonder people are confused.

Why are the contents of the food groups shuffled around so much? One of the reasons has to do with pressure groups. The sugar lobby did not like being singled out, so they got sugar dropped entirely in 1942. Only in 1980, and against bitter opposition, did the USDA get sugar mentioned again, but only as an afterthought in the “Fats, Oils, and Sweets” group. Likewise, butter and margarine were quietly merged into the same group. For similar reasons, the potato lobby got their product dropped as a food group in 1942; the potato and its French fry variant have remained submerged in the “Vegetable” group ever since. For this reason, in the minds of most Americans, a French fry has just the same value as a tomato. As for “lean meat” and “green and yellow vegetables,” they were leveled down and airbrushed out of special mention.

The Bond Effect Food Groups

When we look at the history of our food supply in the next chapter, we will follow the USDA’s broad food group categorizations because most people are familiar with them. However, there is an arbitrary nature to some of the groupings that has more to do with political expediency than scientific rigor. So, we will subdivide some of the groups in a way that allows us to make important distinctions between the types of foods within the group. We will also add groups that do not exist at the moment, namely a “Sugars and Sweeteners” group, “Salt and Sodium” group, and a “Beverages” group. We will also add fats back into the oils group.

By the term
vegetable
, the USDA means any plant food that is not a fruit, grain, nut, or legume. Even after excluding these categories of plant food, the term
vegetable
covers a wide range of plant types. For reasons that will become clear later, we will divide the “Vegetable” group in two: “Vegetables (Starchy)” and “Vegetables (Non-Starchy).”

One USDA group, “Meat, Fish, Poultry, Dry Beans, Nuts and Eggs,” seems to have been lumped together because they are, on the whole, protein-rich foods. However, not all protein-rich foods (for example, cheese) are included and some protein-poor foods (for example, chestnuts) make the list. This USDA food group is just too incoherent for our purposes. There are significant differences among these items, so we will break down this group into three major classes. One is protein-rich foods of animal origin: “Meat, Poultry, Eggs, and Fish.” The other two are protein-rich foods of plant origin: “Dry Beans and Peas (or Legumes)” and “Nuts.”