Darya's latest post got me thinking about food again. I have a question for everyone that has been nagging me for quite sometime. A little history first:As I grew up in the 70's, I remember very vividly being inundated with advice from adults, television, magazines, school health officials, etc. that a certain high carbohydrate diets were ideal for optimum health. Examples were given to us in health class health "professionals" flooded the media and the health market with dietary philosophies that were based on high carbohydrate / low protien meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Twenty years later there's a dramatic reversal and people are making millions of dollars selling products, books, tapes, etc. centered around the concept of a high protien / low carbohydrate diet. This time very detailed explanations accompany this model that exlpain very clearly why a diet high in carbohydrates is virtually garaunteed to make most people overweight and create serious health problems for many.
Finally, one day, somebody asked the right question to a proponent of this new model: "Why has everyone been so adamant about high carbohydrate diets for all these years if any freshman physiology student can explain that it will make people fat and sick?"
His answer sent chills up my spine. He said that the high carbohydrate model was derived and propagated by our own federal government (FDA?), and since the FDA was considered the ultimate authority on health, everyone jumped on the bandwagon and parroted their high carbo model.
I hung desparately on the edge of my seat for the next obvious question, but it never came. I could never understand why, at that moment, everyone listening to this answer didn't jump and scream "WHAT??!!!!" So I've been asking the follow up question silently to myself ever since.
QUESTION: Why haven't the FDA officials responsible for dispensing this model (and even enforcing it to some degree in the public school system) been arrested for health fraud?
Didn't their unlimited financial resources give them enough money to hire competent research scientists? How is it that their ivy league scientists didn't know what every diet professional in the health industry knows: that their high carbohydrate model would virtually garauntee obesity and ill health?
I've even heard dieticians say that the government's dietary programs were nutritionally identical to pig fattening diets and that, if someone were to sit down and DESIGN a diet for fattening up humans, it would look exactly like the governments dietary reccomendations!!
Is this whole high protein / low carbohydrate movement just a big scam or is the FDA going to issue a public apology for their horrible blunder and perhaps reimburse us for the billions of dollars that we've spent on health problems since the 70's? Shouldn't arrests be made for gross negligence, child endangerment, extreme stupidity. How about public executions for the attempted geneocide of U.S. citizens?
