I'm nearly midway through the book
Good Calories, Bad Calories that ozij recommended. It's a good read. It's not a recreational read by any means. But it's a highly informative read, and potentially lifesaving. It's undeniably an important read for many people who have failed to control cholesterol or obesity using the food pyramid.
I'd like to endeavor answering my own question in red text below:
BTW, has anyone here who advocates a low carb diet stumbled across ANY studies they think are valid support of the
lipid theory or the traditional
food pyramid?
Are they ALL bad science?
My take is the USDA food pyramid is the result of bad science. First a side-note that wrong scientific conclusions do not make for bad science. On the contrary, the best scientists make wrong scientific conclusions all the time. It's their job to literally push the envelope of human understanding by extending ingenious, creative hypotheses. So scientists extend their tentative conclusions in the form of hypotheses. Most hypotheses, in the big picture of science, are expected to be wrong. Scientists expect this. So they collectively work very hard trying to overturn each hypothesis rather than drawing conclusions without conclusive proof. At least that's the way the scientific method is supposed to work. But scientists are human, and humans are both political and inherently biased.
Enter the USDA recommended food pyramid. It clearly doesn't work for many people. Scientists advocating primal dieting suspect the food pyramid, high on carbohydrates and low on fat, fails the very design/evolution of human metabolism. These objecting scientists in particular think the USDA recommended food pyramid is flat-out wrong. And they might be right.
If the USDA food pyramid is wrong, that alone doesn't make it bad science. After all, most scientific hypotheses are expected to be wrong. Rather, what makes the USDA food pyramid bad science is that as a health recommendation it is largely the result of one scientist, with an indomitable will, who utilized the political arena. Despite plenty of peer-review objection in the scientific community, the USDA recommended food pyramid is largely the result of well-intended politicians listening to hypothesizing scientist, Ancel Keys.
Ancel Keys hadn't yet proved his scientific hypotheses to the satisfaction of peer review or the scientific method. Rather, Keys knew he was right, so he took a short cut. He pushed his unproven dietary hypotheses to McGovern's committee and then the media. That controversy, and the USDA recommended food pyramid, live on to this day. When we unquestioningly eat according to the USDA recommended food pyramid, we are not necessarily eating what the scientific method might have recommended had the scientific community been allowed to perform its collective duty--- without the political sidestepping. Rather, we are eating what a group of well-intended politicians interpreted as wisdom from influential Ancel Keys and supporters of his dietary hypotheses.
Well, if anyone is struggling with diet-related health issues, despite adherance to the USDA recommended food pyramid, consider the possibility that those recommendations might be wrong for your body type. At the very least
Good Calories, Bad Calories offers some interesting insight regarding the political process within science----and a glimpse of the scientific method being short-circuited by a well-intended comittee of national politicians. I thank ozij for recommending the book!
