No more food pyramid?

[Backroads]

Guess we have a new way to look at government-sponsored nutrition.

USDA's MyPlate - Home page

[Vort]

I note with grim humor that "dairy" still makes up a significant part of the recommended diet. You don't suppose this might have anything to do with the massive government subsidies for dairy farmers, do you?

• Fact: Dairy milk is food designed for baby cows, not humans.

• Fact: Digesting milk sugar (lactose) requires an enzyme (lactase) that all infant mammals produce -- including infant baby humans -- but that almost no adult mammals produce, since they don't suckle their mothers as adults.

• Fact: Outside of Europe (especially northern Europe), some Jewish populations, and a few places in eastern Asia, the vast majority of adult humans, like all other adult mammals, do not manufacture lactase.

• Fact: When someone is called "lactose intolerant", that is another way of saying that they are a normal adult human that lacks the genetic mutation to keep producing lactase past infancy. (In other words, milk is not "normal human food" except for those who happen to have the lactase production mutation.)

• Fact: The majority of humans throughout history have lived their lives without drinking milk.

• Fact: Milk consumption thickens the mucus and thus is a factor in worsening sleep apnea, allergies, and colds.

I have nothing against milk consumption. I drink it myself (though not as much as I used to, and mostly in breakfast cereal). My family members are all big milk drinkers. But the government has a very large political vested interest in dairy production, and that is by far the most reasonable explanation for the USDA's continued insistence of making "dairy" an integral part of the recommended food consumption table, whether pyramidal or any other shape.

It would be lovely to have a government that consistently put people's well-being above political gain, though such an idea is laughably naive. Prepare to keep paying to turn corn into ethanol for the foreseeable future, however inefficient and stupid such an idea may be.

[skippy740]

I think we should all be as responsible with the way we eat as the government is about fiscal responsibility.

Let's not let one appetite accuse another!

[Backroads]

I note with grim humor that "dairy" still makes up a significant part of the recommended diet. You don't suppose this might have anything to do with the massive government subsidies for dairy farmers, do you?

• Fact: Dairy milk is food designed for baby cows, not humans.

• Fact: Digesting milk sugar (lactose) requires an enzyme (lactase) that all infant mammals produce -- including infant baby humans -- but that almost no adult mammals produce, since they don't suckle their mothers as adults.

• Fact: Outside of Europe (especially northern Europe), some Jewish populations, and a few places in eastern Asia, the vast majority of adult humans, like all other adult mammals, do not manufacture lactase.

• Fact: When someone is called "lactose intolerant", that is another way of saying that they are a normal adult human that lacks the genetic mutation to keep producing lactase past infancy. (In other words, milk is not "normal human food" except for those who happen to have the lactase production mutation.)

• Fact: The majority of humans throughout history have lived their lives without drinking milk.

• Fact: Milk consumption thickens the mucus and thus is a factor in worsening sleep apnea, allergies, and colds.

I have nothing against milk consumption. I drink it myself (though not as much as I used to, and mostly in breakfast cereal). My family members are all big milk drinkers. But the government has a very large political vested interest in dairy production, and that is by far the most reasonable explanation for the USDA's continued insistence of making "dairy" an integral part of the recommended food consumption table, whether pyramidal or any other shape.

It would be lovely to have a government that consistently put people's well-being above political gain, though such an idea is laughably naive. Prepare to keep paying to turn corn into ethanol for the foreseeable future, however inefficient and stupid such an idea may be.

I enjoy milk with my cereal. I also use yogurt to combat ice cream cravings. I enjoy ice cream when I don't care to combat the craving with yogurt. I put up with my husband's cheese obsession.

That's my dairy intake in a nutshell.

But I quite agree. THere is a convenient way to get every nutrient milk has to offer in another form.

Also, I've read a handful of LDS-inspired nutrition books over the years, and it seems to my memory that every single one of them mentioned the non-necessity of milk (and meat). Didn't exactly preach against it, but you get the idea.

[Saldrin]

I note with grim humor that "dairy" still makes up a significant part of the recommended diet. You don't suppose this might have anything to do with the massive government subsidies for dairy farmers, do you?

• Fact: Dairy milk is food designed for baby cows, not humans.

• Fact: Digesting milk sugar (lactose) requires an enzyme (lactase) that all infant mammals produce -- including infant baby humans -- but that almost no adult mammals produce, since they don't suckle their mothers as adults.

• Fact: Outside of Europe (especially northern Europe), some Jewish populations, and a few places in eastern Asia, the vast majority of adult humans, like all other adult mammals, do not manufacture lactase.

• Fact: When someone is called "lactose intolerant", that is another way of saying that they are a normal adult human that lacks the genetic mutation to keep producing lactase past infancy. (In other words, milk is not "normal human food" except for those who happen to have the lactase production mutation.)

• Fact: The majority of humans throughout history have lived their lives without drinking milk.

• Fact: Milk consumption thickens the mucus and thus is a factor in worsening sleep apnea, allergies, and colds.

I have nothing against milk consumption. I drink it myself (though not as much as I used to, and mostly in breakfast cereal). My family members are all big milk drinkers. But the government has a very large political vested interest in dairy production, and that is by far the most reasonable explanation for the USDA's continued insistence of making "dairy" an integral part of the recommended food consumption table, whether pyramidal or any other shape.

It would be lovely to have a government that consistently put people's well-being above political gain, though such an idea is laughably naive. Prepare to keep paying to turn corn into ethanol for the foreseeable future, however inefficient and stupid such an idea may be.

Do you ever use a milk alternative bro? or is it just not the same?