There Is A Method to the Madness
This is a podcast where I will be discussing all aspects of physical fitness. I am an exercise physiologist and personal trainer and owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs for the last 25 years. My passion is health and fitness and I am excited to share my views, some stories, interviews and much more with you.
There Is A Method to the Madness
The "New" Food Pyramid
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Welcome to There is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell and I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I am the owner of Maxwell's fitness programs and I've been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really works and most importantly why things work. Hence the name, There is a Method to the Madness. Before I get to today's show, I want to thank Jonathan and Lynn Gilden of the Gilden Group at Realty Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service in home sales. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out what your home is worth? 386-451-2412. Welcome to today's podcast. This is one I've been looking forward to and doing some research on for the past week because a lot of uh questions have arisen from it, whether it be people asking me questions, asking my opinion, bringing it to the gym with their own opinions or uh seeing stuff on social media. And that is the new food pyramid. So I'm going to give you the answer on that. And I want to state that it's the answer on that, because it's not really an opinion when you've studied science, when you went to school and you had all of the education and you continue to have the credentials to know about nutrition. I mean, there are things we've known for years and years and years that uh I mean, they're just known. They're knowables. And uh, you know, sometimes the general public gets confused, and I don't blame them, but that's not because the uh things change as much as certain industries change or marketing changes. But uh, you know, as far as our information on food and diet, we've known pretty much for a really, really long time, at least 50, 60 years, as far as what works and what doesn't work. Probably the only change that's uh come about since I was in school originally is the uh thing with toxins in food that's so much greater now than it used to be. But as far as macronutrients and the food groups and the pyramid and all that nonsense, I mean, we've known for a really, really long time. So, as you know, the method to the madness is to get to the science and talk about the truth. So that's what I'm going to do. To give you a little biographical here first, let me take you through the the uh timeline here on all this. So pretty much from 1956 until early 1990s, the uh the thought was just the four food groups. So if you're a Gen Xer or a boomer, a baby boomer, then you are well aware of that. I mean, we when we went to school, it was the four food groups, and the lunches were set up that way. And essentially, not essentially, but uh factually, the four food groups was milk was one, meat was another, fruit slash vegetable was another, and then bread slash cereal was another. So basically you had a protein, you had milk, you had a vegetable or fruit, and you had some kind of a grain. And that was pretty standardized. So you think if you had a sandwich and a glass of milk with it, and you had some lettuce and tomato on your sandwich, you had everything represented. And really, there is nothing wrong with that. If anything, I think they have screwed things up, making it more complicated. That actually works pretty darn good when you think about it. Now, all of those things need to be broken down further. And I think that's where the uh the confrontational stuff comes about. But like there are differences in cereals and breads, there are differences in types of fruit, and there are certainly differences in types of protein and whether or not you need milk or not. So, yeah, it's changed a little bit, but there are differences within those things, but I still think that was a pretty darn good base. And if you read my book, You Can't Outrun a Poor Diet, I kind of talk about how the original four food groups was probably a little bit better, easier to swallow, no pun intended, than some of the newer schemes that have come out. Now, you know, so the government comes out with these guidelines. And, you know, let's face it, I mean, they don't always get the best people to do these things. There is a lot of lobbying going on to tell the public like what is best and what is not and all that. And if you look at the history of the pyramids, you will see that there was a lot of influence by different types of food industries to get in there. So just because they're coming out, it doesn't mean that they're coming out from experts. A lot of times these things are simply the figureheads talking about what is most important. But if you talk to a lot of dietitians or nutritionists, they will tell you, well, you know, that's not really true or whatever. So I'm one of those that thinks they should just stay out of this as far as that goes. You know, leave that in the hands of the experts, whether that be the physicians, the dietetics, the nutritionists, the physiologist, you know, because these general guidelines they come up with, I mean, they don't help, right? I mean, let's look at the facts. I'm I'm always a big metrics person, you know, let's measure it and see if it's working. So I told you that the four food groups was basically in the 1950s to the early 1990s. Well, obesity has doubled since then, since they've gotten more creative and fancy with the diets and the pyramids and stuff. Um, you know, someone might argue and say, well, you know, that proves this basics was true. And it's like, well, no, not necessarily. It just proves that this isn't helping. All right. So the first food pyramid came out in 1992. So the four food groups kind of carried us into the 1990s, and then somebody decided they needed to mix it all up. And that was 1992, and they came out with the big pyramid. And if you remember, man, I certainly do. I still remember the pictures in my nutrition books, you know, the giant pyramids, and it had the base at the bottom, and the base was basically carbohydrates. So the early 1990s is when the basically no-fat high carb boom came out. And it's not wrong and it's not right. Again, it depends. There's a lot of variables. I mean, I'm going to say this probably 10 times through this podcast, but it really all comes back to calories. But that push, and there was a lot of people involved in that when I talk about lobbying groups. There was the Perdikin group who came out with all of the nonfat cookies and meals and things like that. Well, you know, they were behind a lot of that kind of research stuff. So everything became just don't eat fat. And one of my great professors in college, you know, wrote a whole book on basically how not to eat fat. I mean, I think a lot of people were well intended. It's just that there was more to it than that. Like if you tell people in general, but you know, as far as I know, this is the only country I've lived in. But from what I've seen, you know, you just can't tell Americans that because then they're just going to do as much of something else as they can. So when you said no fat, just avoid fat, well, they started eating carbs. I mean, we're talking any kind of carbs. It didn't matter if it was perfect carbs like legumes and beans and chickpeas and things or sugar. I mean, they're just like, just don't eat fat, just don't eat fat. And, you know, that's not true. Everything comes back to calories. Now, the famous Framingham Heart study, which is absolutely true, and I really try to stay out of these debates on social media, as I've said before, but I had to jump into one here when someone was kind of down a bad talk in the Framingham Heart study. Like, oh, they proved that like it's not fat that's the problem. It's like, no, no, no, no. That that's not what happened at all. The Framingham Heart Study was basically a study to determine what all of the risk factors were for heart attacks. And they gave us our first metrics on that. And they were the usals: high blood pressure, low HDL cholesterol, high LDL cholesterol, high triglycerides, obesity, inactivity, smoking, drinking in excess. Like those were all the metrics used to determine whether or not somebody's at risk for a heart attack. So one of them, two of them actually, that I stated was HDL and LDL cholesterol. So HDL cholesterol is the good cholesterol. It's the cholesterol that carries the LDL, the low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, through the blood. So the more you have that, the more carriers you have. That's why HDL is good. Now, LDL cholesterol doesn't necessarily cause heart attacks, but what it does do is the LDL cholesterol does build up plaques in the arteries to make it more narrow, harder for blood to get through. Now we've known that. These idiots that are saying that it's not true, that is not true. What they're missing is that they're saying, well, it's not the cholesterol you eat that does it. It's like, well, no shit. Nobody ever said it was. Cholesterol is just a type of fat. Sterol is fat cholesterol. It's nothing but a fat. What raises cholesterol is saturated fats. So true, cholesterol doesn't necessarily eat and cause more risk for heart attack, but eating saturated fat raises your cholesterol, which causes more plaque buildup in the arteries, which makes it harder for blood to get through, which causes a greater risk for heart attack. That's not a myth. That is absolutely true. So the Framinghan heart study then kind of precipitated people then saying, well, fat is bad. So in a way, that's true. And we still know that eating too much saturated fat, it's not that it's bad or good, it's that it's high risk. There are other variables, of course, but it's still high risk. We know that. Now, what the marketing companies did then with this information was say, oh, well, then just don't eat any fat, eat everything else. Okay, don't blame the scientists for that. Blame the marketer. So that's what happened with the food, first food pyramid. So they recommended six to eleven servings of grains. They didn't differentiate between good carbs and high sugar carbs. They just said any. Well, that's a mistake. But again, all these little things, all these pyramids are kind of like a mistake. So, yes, that's a mistake. So that didn't work because obesity just shot up even more throughout the 90s, right? I mean, it's continued to grow, and the 90s were bad for that. So that didn't work. But it's not because carbs were bad, it's because people were eating too many of them and they didn't differentiate between them. And human nature, with basically all of the uh, you know, ease of today to get the foods that they want. We're simply gonna do more and more and eat more and more. So that pyramid lasted till about 2005, and uh I started teaching some sports medicine around then. So they came out with the my pyramid. Well, now they decided to differentiate a little bit between the carbohydrates. I said, still keep them at the base of your pyramid, still make that the majority of what you eat. And by the way, in the old pyramid, at the very peak was sugars and saturated fats, and that's true, you still should avoid those people. So, you know, that that's what was at the peak then. Um, my pyramid didn't change a lot, it just personalized it. The my part was like, well, we're not gonna say necessarily it's six to eleven grains, we're gonna decide how many you need based on your size and your activity levels. So not a lot changed. It still stayed basically the base was at the grains of carbohydrates at the bottom and the processed carbs and the alcohol and the fats at the top, meaning eat the least of. Not much change. Then around 2011, my plate came out, and basically the uh the government decided to say, well, you know, let's get our mind off the big picture and let's get it to the small pitcher. Let's bring it back to the plate. Now it's funny is that my plate of 2011 looked a lot like the four food groups. Basically, all it was was a plate and it was divided into four, and it actually did have a cup, but now they replaced the milk with juice or water, and um, it had basically a grain of protein, a fruit, and vegetable sitting there. So it was very similar, but they're saying let's focus more on what you eat when you eat versus how much you eat per day. And that was my plate of 2011. I mean, you can see how these things just don't work very well. I mean, again, we can argue all day whether or not they should be even involved or not. I mean, I'm not one of those people that think, oh, keep all government out of our lives. Like, I'm not that. I mean, that's you know, insane. Um, you know, there has to be a happy balance of everything. But I I do believe that the right people need to be speaking for whatever the issues are. I mean, if it's food and nutrition, it needs to be the right people and not politicians telling us what to do. I mean, what do they know about it? They know absolutely nothing when it really comes down to it. So, whatever it is that goes for medicine, that goes for everything, the right people need to be giving the right directions. And unfortunately, I mean, I haven't seen that in the food industry since I've been doing it. I mean, I know the the food scientists say what we're supposed to be doing, and then I listen to them, and the people that listen to me are listening to them because they're listening to me and I listen to them. If you're getting it off of social media, I don't know what to tell you on that. Um, so now let's move a little bit forward to today. So the new pyramid has come out. It's become all the rage because people are calling it the inverted pyramid, and they're all, you know, some groups of people are like super happy, you know, namely um a lot of the you know muscle head bodybuilders, which I'm not like ripping on. I mean, I I am ripping on, I guess, muscle head version of it. Like, and when I mean that, what I mean is basically the people who um have always had strong opinions, but with lack of education, lack training, not so much what they do because I bodybuild. There's nothing wrong with that. Bodybuilding is just basically saying you're trying to build your body up to make it strong and resilient and have muscle and all that good stuff. But like, you know, that group, as far as the uneducated group that have a lot of influence for whatever reason, um, are happy because, you know, they've been basically um steak and potato guys their whole life, mostly steak, and they're just real happy that they're calling it the inverted pyramid because now it's essentially flip-flopped in a way. So, like when they used to say saturated fat, now the new pyramid says, oh, don't worry about it too much. What you really, really have to watch are carbs. So here we go again, we're flipping the cycle. Not completely, like it's not as different as some people are trying to make it out to be. But the the sort of concerning part of it is that the emphasis on any kind of protein, go for it. That's kind of like saying in the original food pyramid of 1992 that any kind of carbs were okay. And, you know, that's not true either. So the new pyramid basically says, you know, bring protein back. I even heard people say, you know, let's stop the war on protein. I mean, are you kidding me? I mean, seriously, I mean, it's insane. But anyway, you know, so just like Nathan Pritiken and some other groups were in on the lobbying to get, you know, the government to basically bastardize fats and uh, you know, talk about how good carbs are. Well, now the the beef industry and some of the protein industry has been 100% behind a lot of this research, air quotes on this stuff. And there isn't any, by the way. Not any good research that is trying to prove what they are saying with this. So the new pyramid has basically um any kind of protein at the bottom, which could include saturated fatty red meat, which by the way is ludicrous, but and then at the very, very top, eat a little bit of carbohydrate. So they've inverted it to an extent that you know, I mean, when you really dig into it, they're not telling you to go crazy with some of the fats and proteins, and they're not saying neglect all carbs, but they've definitely changed it up. But eating all the beef you want is definitely concerning. All right, so let me tell you, like, so let me tell you as far as what protein sources go. So when you're looking for good quality protein sources, number one, and this is where you have to go to nutritionists and um dietetics and physicians and physiologists and people that know, um, you know, you and and this is out there by the way, you can literally chat GBT it or Google it to come up with your lean best so protein sources. Beef isn't even in the top six. I mean, in most it's like seven or eight, but like at the best, you'll see it at six, but it's not even in the top six of what the real studies are showing. The best protein is an egg white, plain and simple. It has all of the essential amino acids, it has zero fat. An egg white has 17 calories and four grams of fat. I mean, you're saying, well, one egg white. Well, you eat more than one. But the point is that is the best per serving type of protein, followed by the egg. The egg is only slightly worse because the yolk has some fat in it, but the protein source is the same. Followed by a whey protein, whey is found in milk. So if you get whey protein, whether it be powder or in skim milk with no fat, that's your third best source, followed by white fish like mahi mahi, followed by poultry, followed by plant proteins, followed by beef. So beef isn't even a good protein. And here is one. Why? So beef actually has, I did the math on all of this, from four ounces of lean protein. Four ounces of beef has 26 grams of protein. That's cool. I mean, that's good. By the way, our body can only digest about 25 grams of protein at a time. So when you do see these people selling, like, you know, these protein jug powders that say 50 grams per scoop, it's like you're wasting half of that anyway. So once again, that's marketing. Don't get your information from marketers. So about 25, so that's good. Beef covers that. As does chicken. Chicken has 26 to 27 grams of protein per four ounces. So it's tied with beef, as does mahi mahi, 22 to 24 grams of protein. So all three of these choices have roughly 25 grams of protein, four ounces of beef, four ounces of white meat chicken, four ounces of white fish mahi. Here's the kicker. Four ounces of beef has anywhere from six to nine grams of saturated fat. Six to nine grams of saturated fat. You're supposed to keep your saturated fat content below 36 grams a day for it not to become a risk. Now, saturated fat means that essentially it comes from animals. Unsaturated fats come from plants and they're a lot healthier and actually are pretty healthy. Saturated fat is not. Trans fat is the absolute worst. So six to nine grams of fat per four ounces of beef. Less than a gram. Okay? Let that sink in. Less than half of a gram in fish, in white fish. Okay? So you're getting the same protein in the white fish, in the white protein, but you're getting nine times, ten times the amount of fat. I mean, come on, it's just common sense. I told you saturated fat is linked to heart disease. That can't be disputed. I don't care what these inver inverted pyramid people are trying to tell you. It's the facts. Go look it up. And out of all of the protein sources, the common 10 sources, beef has the highest amount of saturated fat. Now, you can go non-fat yogurt, and you're going to get roughly, well, let me, I'll tell you exactly what you're going to get. You're going to get 16 grams of protein per half a cup. I mean, so you go with a cup, you've got 32 ounces, you go a little bit less than that, you're going to get your 25 grams of protein non-fat, so no fat. Now, if you went saturated fat, so if you got whole milk yogurt, you're now going to increase that by at least six grams of serving. So, really, what you need to understand when it comes to protein is yes, we all need a certain amount of protein, but what comes with protein is fat. So you have to pick the protein sources with the leanest amount of fat. Period. So if they want to invert the pyramid and say, have more protein, okay, but make sure that you're getting your protein at a low fat level. Don't let them fool you on that. And remember, you don't need more than 25 grams of protein in a serving, or that just gets converted to fat and wasted. All right? That's a fact too. You can look it up. Now, when it comes to carbohydrates, if you're not eating any carbohydrates, you're not gonna have any energy to grow. You're not gonna have any energy to get stronger. Your brain uses only glucose for fuel. Glucose is carbohydrate. So if you're not eating enough carbs, you're not gonna be able to think clearly. You're gonna go into what is called gluconeogenesis. That's where your body literally eats itself to have enough energy to be able to sustain what you need to do. So your body starts wasting away and eating its own muscles. People, you have to learn that there is a balance in all of this. All right. Quit looking for the government or anybody else to save you on this. They can't give you these regulations, they can't give you these recommendations is the better word. And just you go, oh, okay, that's what I need to do. No, you need to study, listen to people who know what they're talking about, and make sure you vet them. You know, I can assure you, you can vet me all you want. My credentials are very, very easy to find. They're right on my website. So, you know, vet the people you listen to and go after the right information online. You can find it. None of this is hidden. I literally used some Chat GBT to make sure I was on the right path with some of my statistics today. It's right there. It's not hidden from anybody. All right. So I only said it once before this. I'm gonna say it again. We can't forget about quantity. Everything comes back to calories. Calories is energy for the body. So does that mean, oh, Robbie, really we're picking on beef today, man. Guess I'll never have a hamburger again. No, no, no. That's not what I'm saying. Look, I don't like it. I don't eat it, but does that mean I haven't eaten it? Of course not. Of course I've eaten a ton in my life. I just don't like it now. And I don't tell people not to eat it now. If you want to go out and have a hamburger once a week or something like that, knock yourself out. I don't care. It's it's no, that's not bad. I mean, it's not what you do once in a while that's bad at all, or whatever your your simple pleasures are. I mean, I did a 5K over the weekend. That's that's not expending a ton of energy for me or anything, but they had this great pizza there in at the event afterwards. I had a piece of pizza. I mean, come on, it was good. It's not what you eat once in a while that's a problem. It's what you eat all the time. What I'm trying to tell you is when you're thinking you can only do this and don't have to do that, and the this that they want you to do is wildly not healthy for you, you need to rethink it. Okay? If you have any questions or concerns, email me, message me. There's literally a link on all of the places you get your podcasts that say text me. And I'll get your opinions. I'll get your thoughts, I'll get your questions. All right. Until next time, be max fit and be max well. All right. Thank you everybody for listening to today's show. 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