S1E05 - The Shoddy Science Behind the FDA Food Pyramid
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
food, eat, healthy, studies, myth, people, science, jack, companies, food pyramid, usda guidelines, banks, usda, shoe, large, remember, preprint, guidelines, talk, epidemiologic studies
SPEAKERS
Jack Heald, Dr. Philip Ovadia
Jack Heald 00:00
Welcome back to the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast with Dr. Philip Ovadia. I'm your host, Jack Heald. And today, Dr. O, I'm looking at a preprint of your book. And I'm flipping through the chapters. And I see here in Chapter 2, 12 myths they want us to believe. I'd love to hear more about this. Myth number three, the food pyramid is based on good science.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 00:31
Thanks, Jack, I think this is a great topic for us to dive in today.
Jack Heald 00:38
So let's talk about that. That's a myth that the food pyramid is based on good science. Yeah,
Dr. Philip Ovadia 00:46
I think that when most people sit around and think about how we got the food pyramid, they can picture sort of, probably a big conference room full of scientists and all their white jack all their white coats, and with their glasses, and they're all sitting around, and they're all discussing all of these great studies that were done, that showed that when you eat this food, you get unhealthy. And when you eat this food, you stay healthy. And they, they think that there was all of this probably millions and millions of dollars that went into the research behind the food pyramid,
Jack Heald 01:30
that's a reasonable expectation,
Dr. Philip Ovadia 01:32
that would be a reasonable expectation. And unfortunately, it's just not true. The food pyramid, that the background behind the food pyramid really comes from a lot of fairly lousy studies, what are called epidemiologic studies, and kind of big fancy word that basically what that means is that people look at large sets of data, and they take large groups of people. And they go, and they ask those people, what did you eat? And you know, that would seem to be a pretty good way to figure out the relationship between what we eat and our health outcomes. And if you look at healthy people, and you ask them, What did you eat, and you look at unhealthy people, and you ask them, What did you eat, you probably should be able to get a pretty good idea of what foods make people healthy and what foods make people unhealthy. But there are a bunch of problems with doing science that way. And probably the two biggest problems with doing science that way, is first, people aren't very good about remembering what they eat. And they're not very honest about what they eat, when they know they're being studied.
Jack Heald 02:56
Now I can I can say for sure. Like, I can you sell them remember what I had in the previous meal. And I mean, literally the last meal I had I often don't remember. So the thought that that's how they conducted this. air quotes. Research is horrifying.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 03:14
Yeah, a lot of these. A lot of these types of studies require rely on something called a food frequency questionnaire. And what they do is, and maybe even some people in the audience have sort of participated this you get mailed or emailed or someone went door to door back in the day. And they go to someone and they say how many times over the past week or the past month? Did you eat x food? And why food and you know, they go through. And these are often pretty lengthy studies, you can imagine anyone who's ever taken any study like this you get pretty tired once you get past the 10 questions, the first 10 questions, and there'll be 100 or, or even more questions. So you know, you're relying on people trying to accurately remember what they ate over the past week or month. And we just know that people aren't very good at doing that. And then yeah, no one
Jack Heald 04:20
is doing this. This is the research that led to the food pyramid.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 04:26
This is the majority of the research that led to the food
Jack Heald 04:28
asking people what they a
Dr. Philip Ovadia 04:31
Yeah. And then you know, sometimes sign God, it is pretty shocking. And scientists even recognize that this is not a good way to diet. So then instead, they would say, okay, we're going to make people crack what they eat over a seven day period over or a month, let's say, and so now instead of having to remember they actually you're supposed to write down in real time. But again if you know your being studied, most of us tend not to quite be so honest with what we write down. And, and we also are not very good about estimating how much food we're eating at a time how much something weighs? Or what percentage of the meal a certain food What? Okay, I'm,
Jack Heald 05:20
I just want to make sure I'm clear here on this. The so called research methodology that went into developing the USDA Food guidelines was essentially, surveys,
Dr. Philip Ovadia 05:39
essentially, the vast majority of the science behind it was, what are these epidemiologic studies? They're basically surveys. And quite frankly, there's one more very big problem is that study we haven't mentioned yet. And that is, is that what people eat isn't the only input on their health, it's a big part of it, but it's not the only thing. And when you only ask people about what they eat you get groups of people who eat what we perceive to be healthy foods, those people also tend to do a lot of other things that they that are considered to be healthy. So you know, those people who eat lots of fruits and vegetables, always here are healthy, for us are the same people who don't smoke. And they're the same people who exercise or, and they're the same people who are more social and get out you know, have a better well developed social network. And all those other habits that I mentioned, are things that have been shown to support good health. So when you take a group of people, and you only ask them about their food, and you see that they're more healthy, and you therefore try and conclude that it's the food that's making them healthy, it ignores that it might be a lot of the other stuff that they're doing, along with the food that they eat, that's making them healthy.
Jack Heald 07:16
That would be akin to talking to people who go to the gym and work out. And asking people what brand of shoes they wear, and drawing the conclusion that wearing a particular brand of shoe makes you healthier, when in fact it just happens to be that the people who buy that particular brand of shoe do the particular kinds of work and exercise that leads them to be healthy. Is that a good analogy?
Dr. Philip Ovadia 07:48
Yeah, that's a very good analogy.
Jack Heald 07:50
Okay, so we can't trust the USDA is science. Yay. I don't know what more we need to say about any Well, I got to know, is there anything more you want to say about the quality of the science?
Dr. Philip Ovadia 08:05
Well, there is one more thing that I want to say about how we got the US the food pyramid, the USDA guidelines, and that is that the food industry has a very large influence on the food guideline. So in other words, the people that are making the food are usually the ones that are either funding this science, or even more overtly the people who the large food companies, it is oftentimes their executive, their employees, their former employees, that then go on to serve on the USDA guidelines committee, right oversees the development of the food guidelines. And so you know, it, it's very much that the
Jack Heald 09:03
the
Dr. Philip Ovadia 09:06
this is probably, maybe this is the best analogy, but it's very much that the criminals are watching overseeing the jail. Yeah, we
Jack Heald 09:13
call this regulatory capture. Yeah, back in my days as a commodities trader, it was, was common knowledge that there was a revolving door between Wall Street and the Department of the Treasury. And the SEC that the same people that were allegedly supposed to be regulating the behavior of the big banks, would you know, after leaving government get a cushy job at those exact big banks, or vice versa. They leave a cushy job at the big bank and go be a regulator. And it was, it was an open secret that the only people who ever got slapped by the SEC were the Small time petty criminals the jaywalkers of the double Parkers, the mass murderers, they just didn't pay any attention to I'm using those terms metaphorically, but you get the idea. So can I can I ask one more question about what you call the big food producers? Sure, we name names.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 10:23
And we probably can name names the reality is that there's about well 10 to 12, major food companies, major companies that control the supply of food in the United States, and in the world, and you know, these are going to be companies such as you know, Coca Cola. Tyson is other big name Archer Daniels. Yes, logs large, General mineral foods. And another one, Cargill, or Gil, disco these are large collectives, and people don't seem to we get fooled into thinking we have a large variety of food in the United States, we go into the supermarket. And there are aisles, and aisles and aisles of all these different brands, and they're in different packages. And, and we think we have a lot of different foods. And the reality is, is that the majority of the food is made by a very small number of companies. And a lot of it is just the same ingredients that are just mixed in slightly different ways with slightly different flavorings, to make us think that it's different food. But the reality is, is that the majority of it is very much the same. And we get fooled into thinking that we have all of this variety when we actually don't.
Jack Heald 12:05
Myth number four, in your book says, the people who produce our food want us to be healthy. Why is that a myth?
Dr. Philip Ovadia 12:16
Well, again so when you look at these large corporations, the purpose of any corporation is to increase its own profits and benefit its owners or its shareholders. And so if you are a food company, your one and only focus is on selling more food. And a way to sell more food is the basically keep people hungry more of the time. And that
12:48
ends up,
Dr. Philip Ovadia 12:49
you know, going exactly opposite what you need to do to get healthy in the
Jack Heald 12:55
end. Well maybe we should explore that with another episode, because that sounds like that to me. I think we should, let's, let's, let's devote an episode to why they want to keep us hungry and how they do it.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 13:14
I think that would be a great topic for another.
Jack Heald 13:16
All right. Well, this has been the staff my operating table podcast with cardiac surgeon Dr. Philip Ovadia. I'm your host, Jack Heald. Thank you for joining us. Go ahead and be sure to subscribe so you get notified whenever we release a new episode. And we'll talk to you next time.