What You Need to Know About the Future of Food

Picture courtesy Patrick Fore on Unsplash

Food is getting more attention these days than the usual weight-loss fad allots. This is because the Tufts University's Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy dean Dariush Mozaffarian stood before the Senate in July 2022 seeking to hold the second White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health.
This will be the second such event in history with the first occurring in 1969.

Flashback to 1969: you have mass protests against the Vietnam War plus the tail end of the Civil Rights movement. Enter the distraction. A research study was conducted using NHANES (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) in 1968 checking the underweight status for children aged 2-19 across the US. No one paid attention, BUT once a senate committee was established followed by senators visiting the Delta and finally CBS creating a documentary titled Hunger Report: A Critical Review, the American populous was paying attention.

What resulted from this conference was the creation of the WIC program (highly contested by the USDA for being a replicate program, they lost the battle though). It also made the National School Lunch program permanent and established the Dietary Goals for Americans (DGA) aka the food pyramid, I mean My Plate, I mean...whatever they changed it to today.

In 1977 the American Medical Association (AMA) argued against the DGA stating:
"The evidence for assuming that the benefits to be derived from the adoption of such universal goals as set forth in the report is not conclusive...and potential for harmful effects...would occur through the adoption of the proposed national goals."

By 1980 a revised version of the guidelines was released:

• To avoid overweight, consume only as much energy as is expended; if overweight, decrease energy intake and increase energy expenditure.
  
• Increase the consumption of complex carbohydrates and “naturally occurring” sugars from about 28 percent of intake to about 48 percent of energy intake.
• Reduce the consumption of refined and processed sugars by about 45 percent to account for about 10 percent of total energy intake.
• Reduce overall fat consumption from approximately 40 percent to about 30 percent of energy intake.
• Reduce saturated fat consumption to account for about 10 percent of total energy intake; and balance that with polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, which should account for about 10 percent of energy intake each.
• Reduce cholesterol consumption to about 300 milligrams a day.
• Limit the intake of sodium by reducing the intake of salt to about 5 grams a day.
  

This has been the gold standard for decades and proven to create disease versus health.

And finally 1990 brought about the National Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research Act which required the guidelines be updated every 5 years AND mandated they be utilized by statute.

Yay.

So that is how we came to be where we are now. A nation led by a select few nutritionally every 5 years on a foundation that doctors contested strongly, only to concede once the battle got too hard OH and every 5 years? Well, the information utilized to make changes is gathered and reviewed via systemic review. Systemic review means that data is taken from published studies and summarized into a conclusion. It is often misleading. Nutrition data particularly is ripe for error as it is all run through NHANES (yes, the organization that began the whole process). NHANES utilizes a method called AMPM (Automated Multiple Pass Method). The AMPM consists of five questions asked of a person to recollect the past 24 hours. First, recall all foods consumed then recall forgotten foods, take into account the time and occasion, describe the foods eaten (sizes, amounts, etc) then try to recall any additional foods forgotten. 100% based off human memory. Not so reliable. On top of that nutrition research does mainly funded through private corporations such as Coca-Cola, Kellogg, Post, etc. so they tend to have a biased conclusion.

You may have seen this image all over the internet lately. It is an overview of the new Food Compass Nutrient Profiling System which was founded by the Tufts' University Friedman School of Nutrition Dr. Mozaffarian which, he has proposed and will utilize at the September 2022 White House Conference on Nutrition and Health to replace the current DGA for Americans.

The way it works is items are scored on a scale of 1 to 100 with 1 being unhealthy and 100 being very healthy.

The researchers of this paper noted that "...health is not determined by the consumption of single foods but rather overall diet quality." In other words, the quality of the food you eat is what matters most- is it processed? what processing did it go through? what additives, if any, are there?

Sadly the Food Compass algorithm encourages the consumption of processed foods over whole foods. Here are some screenshots to give you an idea where the peer reviewed critique came from:

As you can see from the screenshots these algorithms encourage the consumption of cereals over meats (by meats I'm talking about your steaks, and other meats in their true state NOT fast food). Any number 30 and under is to be minimized under this classification method, even eggs score less than candy! No worries though, they do include possom, squirrel, and beaver.

The ultimate goal

The picture to the right shows the NEW government agencies that will result from this meeting next month (because the problem is not enough government...always- smh).

Basically control of the food.
I failed to mention that the Tufts University program is backed by the Rockefeller Foundation. While this might not cause red flags for you immediately, their goal is to completely transform the Western diet- I'm not talking about stopping you from eating fast food, trash foods, I'm talking about a complete reversal of the foods you consume.
Here is what you can look forward to:

Bugs.
Forget eating steaks, burgers, chicken. They want you eating bugs.
They know Americans will not take to the idea of eating bugs so they have a plan to help us embrace this new way of life.

"It may not be too long before we can all buy a bag of edible insects at our local grocery store. Despite being eaten by 2 billion people globally, EU laws have prevented the sale of insects for human consumption.

However, the EU’s new Novel Food Regulation, which came into force in January, might mean insects will become a more common sight on European plates.
In 2017, Switzerland changed its food safety laws and became the first European country to allow the sale of insect-based food for humans. And the same year, the Coop unveiled a range of mealworm burgers and balls in some of its Swiss supermarkets.
In March, IKEA’s external innovation lab SPACE10 revealed it is “reimagining” popular dishes at the retailer’s in-store restaurants. In a blog post, the researchers explain that they are working on bug burgers and mealworm meatballs, but add that the new ingredients are being tested so customers won’t find them on IKEA menus."

The Healthy You Master Plan is going fully online next month, just in time to beat out the White House Conference. Learn the TRUTH about food, and make healthy decisions for you and your family. Get on the early bird list to be notified first when it opens up!