Directly and indirectly.

Buying decisions from parents was influenced. Advertising influenced people. School lunches. What parents would feed other kids after activities. Habits of people "never giving it a second thought" were still being shaped by these forces. Even if someone only thinks about it a fraction of the time, it moves the needle. If my mom ate 10% more processed carbs than her parents and passed those habits to me, I was impacted. Rinse Repeat for 60 years.

We did because the schools followed the food pyramid. So they pushed foods on us that were low fat and high carb (like the ‘healthy’ chocolate skim milk, and no whole milk). Margarine instead of butter. Government food recommendations are HUGE deal to kids in public schools in the United States.

Ah, that is a good point. I was a poor sack lunch kid so I never considered that aspect.

Have they improved at all? Minnesota passed free school lunch for all, and my daughter will be starting school in a few years. Packing her a healthy lunch literally becomes the more expensive option.

It very much depends on where you live. Many Republicans were livid about Michelle Obama’s healthy school lunch effort and that inspired unnecessary rancor over what shouldn’t be controversial.

The other problem is that if kids aren’t used to eating vegetables at home they might not eat them at school, and the schools don’t want to deal with increased waste / throwing.

It's so weird to me that free school lunches for children are something that is not 100% immediately obvious and uncontroversial and beyond any discussion.

Even in the UK in the 1980s, at the height of ghoulish neoliberal Thatcherism, there was a major controversy when she tried to stop giving free milk to kids in school (milk-snatcher they called her).

I can't imagine eating high carb and margarine is a problem for children. They burn anything they swallow especially if you stick to decent carbs like bread or rice.

It derails where parents serve yoghurt drinks to babies (have seen that) or when they get accustomed to open the fridge for a drink (seen that also).

Until recently, margarine was high in trans fats, which are especially unhealthy.

Margarine and butter both sort under "fat" in old dietary guidelines. The reason schools (or anyone) preferred the former was because of cost.

I bet government food recommendations was just the starting point, and concerns about cost and getting kids to actually eat it would have transformed any plan into something similar. Calories processed into pure forms (sugar and fat) are cheap. Grains are super cheap, which was a big part of why they were the backbone of dietary recommendations for so long - no use instructing people to eat something they can't afford.

> I really can’t imagine someone who sitting around deciding “I have to eat more bread, the government’s pyramid drawing demands it” rather than just eating what they want to eat.

Actually, to a shocking degree, yes.

I grew up in an immigrant family, so my parents were far too busy working to do non-mainstream research on diet. I grew up eating 2+ bowls of white rice, another serving of vegetables, and a small serving of meat for most meals. This was me "trying to be healthy" given the mainstream knowledge at the time.

If your parents aren't well-off enough to do dedicated research into the optimal diet for their children (which describes most of American parents), then you'll follow the advertised government guidelines.

As diets go, meat, rice and vegetables isn’t that bad.

Cereal… not so great.

Agreed, the thing is my kids can afford the calories that I’ve been avoiding for a very long time. Starch has energy, habits about balance are important too.

Rice is s cereal.

The main problem is the processing, not the underlying grain ;)

[delayed]

Yeah m, thought th ‘breakfast’ part of cereal was a given since that’s what we’re discussing.

That sounds like a perfectly fine diet.

>2+ bowls of white rice, another serving of vegetables, and a small serving of meat for most meals. This was me "trying to be healthy" given the mainstream knowledge at the time

I mean, except for the white rice (which should always be whole, like all grains in your diet) this seems like a good diet. Of course it all depends on how much stuff you were given to eat, but there is nothing wrong with this

“Should” is a hefty term. If you’re doing fine on white rice by all means eat white rice.

"Must" is a hefty term, not "should". Ask any nutritionist and they'll tell you whole rice is always the better choice for nutrition

Sure. But it don’t matter much

Go and look how many vitamins and nutrients are lost making white grains and how much the glycemic index rises.

It matters a lot, especially if it's a main part of your diet.

Everything is relative. But imo it’s VERY unlikely to matter “a lot”. Everything is trickier if you’re trying to lose weight, but white rice vs brown is a tiny offender relative to the more common culprits

Why are you talking about losing weight?

That is a common context for consideration of nutrition.

Whole grain rice contains higher levels of arsenic. A little bit is fine, but 2+ bowls per day may be problematic.

And getting the majority of your calories from grains of any type is in no way a "good diet". That myth needs to die.

You should not be eating the same whole grain (or any food for that matter) all of the time exactly because each food has its pros and cons (the cons are vastly outnumbered by the pros if you eat the good foods though)

Every dietitian tells you to vary your diet as much as possible. Your reply is moot because you are blindly considering 1 argument at a time while the guidelines paint a whole picture

Variety is good. But any dietician or guidelines who tells you to base your diet on grains should be ignored.

Says who?

If the meat in question is fish, that is pretty much the Japanese diet, and they are doing pretty well health-wise.

That is a dramatically healthier meal than very many American kids typically eat. Compare it to, say: a hotdog, a bag of potato chips, and a 20oz bottle of soda.

I really doubt if people actually ate the food guide pyramid they would be overweight. The problem is they still lace everything with that top part of fats, oils, and sweets. Cheetos are not the base of the pyramid. I don’t know anyone that is obese from eating whole grain breads, rice, and pasta. It’s not calorie dense until you start adding all the extras.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/12/13/whats-on-...

> he or she also consumes 36 pounds of cooking oils – more than three times as much as in the early 1970s.

If you are lunch served by a public school then your diet was impacted by the food pyramid.

Well-meaning adults based what they gave kids on the food pyramid.

If that were true, and the food pyramid was this disaster, you'd expect the kids of the well-educated middle class to be fatter and the kids of parentally neglected kids to be thinner.

If it's not like that, probably other factors were a lot more important than the food pyramid.

It definitely contributed to the overall feeling or notion of what was considered healthy by non-nutritionists.

> I have heard this levied against the government before as having caused the obesity epidemic, but I really can’t imagine someone who sitting around deciding “I have to eat more bread, the government’s pyramid drawing demands it” rather than just eating what they want to eat.

And even if a huge number of Americans did robotically follow it that would not explain the obesity epidemic, because the obesity epidemic is worldwide.

The obesity epidemic varies widely by county.

But many countries that had a similar food pyramid are relatively thin, and some countries that are very obese never had one, so you're right that it's a poor explanation

I have to measure sugar level everyday, so I have rapid numerical feedback on my eating habits, that helps to nudge me to healthier choices.