Summary: Our seventy-fifth show! Ep. 75, Denise Minger on Death by Food Pyramid In this episode, Stacy and Sarah are joined by Denise Minger to discuss her involvement with the real food movement and her book Death by Food Pyramid.The Paleo View (TPV), Episode 75: Denise Minger on Death by Food Pyramid 0:00 - Introduction 0:47 - News & Views Welcome to the show Denise Minger Stacy and Denise met almost two years ago on the Low Carb Cruise You can find Denise on her site Raw Food SOS and through her book Death by Food Pyramid Sarah finds this to be one of the best books she has ever read - it is not only full of wonderful information, but was a pleasure to read More about Denise At the age of 7 Denise went vegetarian by personal choice and that continued for 10 years before she became an omnivore again At the age of 11 she was diagnosed with a wheat allergy and learned to read food labels Shortly after that she was also diagnosed with a soy and dairy allergy, so she became interested in raw veganism and adopted a lifestyle where she ate nothing but fruits and grains, with fat taking up no more than 10% of her diet After a year of eating that way she had cavity issues, hair loss, extreme weight-loss, and brain fog Denise realized that the information she found on the internet was not actually helping her, so she abandoned raw veganism and created her site - the change in her diet made her realize that her body was really missing something Her site was created to help other raw vegans who were struggling with health issues as a result of the vegan diet The China Study book kept coming up in arguments within the vegan community - so Denise read it again and dug into the results from the studies to see if the statistics were true or not, and she found that the data was cherry picked and the information in the book didn't represent the full study accurately The post on her blog critiquing the book went viral and a whole new audience came to her site looking for more background on these findings She expanded the focus of her site and now works on exploring health studies to show the true scope of data and what results the data points to Death by Food Pyramid offers another critical analysis, but on the government's dietary guidelines and the history on where those come from and who/what influenced them (24:41) The Development of the First Food Pyramid The USDA was put into place around the Civil War and the mission was to support agriculture and to distribute information to the general public about agriculture Around World War 2 our disease issues began to shift and chronic diseases began to rise, it was also at this time that the USDA developed the food guide system called the basic four that focused on meat, grains, dairy and fruits and vegetables - there were no specifics given on servings This recommendation was in place for a long time and didn't support our health issues as they evolved When a new nutritionist was brought in to help design a new recommendation for eating, she developed a food pyramid that suggested five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables, liberal amounts of cold-pressed fat, and to limit whole grains to two to three servings a day based on activity levels When the food pyramid was submitted to the Secretary of Agriculture it was sent back to her completely revised with heavy emphasis on high grains, low fat, and low servings of produce The nutritionist warned her superiors that this structure would cause an obesity epidemic, but without the power the message was lost, and she abandoned the project and the USDA took it over and removed the science and data from the recommendations they were making Check out more on Luise Light, the nutritionist mentioned above, through her book What to Eat (40:34) The Cause of the Increase in Heart Disease Ancel Keys is the father of the low fat movement, and is known for the research he did on heart disea
