Jul 174 min read

Starchy carbs and how capitalism is controlling what is on your plate.

Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@octadan?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash">Octavian Dan</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/brown-and-white-mushroom-on-black-background-3ewRXjFesgI?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash">Unsplash</a>

Of the three macronutrients we need to survive (protein, fat and carbohydrates), only two are essential. This means that your body cannot make them, so we have to get them from food. Can you guess which two they are? If you guessed protein and fat, you get a gold star because we do not need dietary carbohydrates to survive. Our bodies are able to use fat and protein in the absence of carbohydrates. Our brains and bodies love to run on glucose (from carbohydrates) for fuel, but they will also run beautifully on ketones (from fat).

Wait a minute... If the minimum carbohydrate intake we need is 0g. Why the heck are we being pushed starchy carbs from every angle? Why, when you walk through the supermarket, do the vast majority of foods on the shelves contain grains or starchy carbohydrates? Why are the majority of our snack foods carbohydrate based? Why have we grown up with 'food pyramids' and 'eatwell guides' that tell us to 'base meals on potatoes, rice, pasta or other starchy carbohydrates' and advise us to eat 6-11 servings (!!!) of these foods a day?

Very. Good. Questions.

The answer to them all -- dollar, dollar, dollar bill, y'all.

Let me explain: back in the 1980s, Luise Light, who was the USDA's Director of Dietary Guidance and Nutrition Education Research, along with a team of other top nutritionists, came up with a food pyramid that looked something like this:

Unfortunately, their carefully researched and thoughtfully constructed pyramid was 'revised' before being published. Luise Light had this to say:

When our version of the Food Guide came back to us revised, we were shocked to find that it was vastly different from the one we had developed. As I later discovered, the wholesale changes made to the guide by the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture were calculated to win the acceptance of the food industry. For instance, the Ag Secretary’s office altered wording to emphasize processed foods over fresh and whole foods, to downplay lean meats and low-fat dairy choices because the meat and milk lobbies believed it’d hurt sales of full-fat products; it also hugely increased the servings of wheat and other grains to make the wheat growers happy. The meat lobby got the final word on the color of the saturated fat/cholesterol guideline which was changed from red to purple because meat producers worried that using red to signify “bad” fat would be linked to red meat in consumers’ minds.

Wait, WHAT?! So for decades we have been eating to dietary guidelines bought by industries to suit their bottom lines rather than the health and vitality of our own bottoms? Yes, yes, we have.

Luise Light continues:

Where we, the USDA nutritionists, called for a base of 5-9 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables a day, it was replaced with a paltry 2-3 servings (changed to 5-7 servings a couple of years later because an anti-cancer campaign by another government agency, the National Cancer Institute, forced the USDA to adopt the higher standard).

Our recommendation of 3-4 daily servings of whole-grain breads and cereals was changed to a whopping 6-11 servings forming the base of the Food Pyramid as a concession to the processed wheat and corn industries. Moreover, my nutritionist group had placed baked goods made with white flour — including crackers, sweets and other low-nutrient foods laden with sugars and fats — at the peak of the pyramid, recommending that they be eaten sparingly. To our alarm, in the “revised” Food Guide, they were now made part of the Pyramid’s base. And, in yet one more assault on dietary logic, changes were made to the wording of the dietary guidelines from “eat less” to “avoid too much,” giving a nod to the processed-food industry interests by not limiting highly profitable “fun foods” (junk foods by any other name) that might affect the bottom line of food companies.

So the pyramid that started out looking like the one above looks more like this in 1992.

Around the same time, obesity levels started to skyrocket, almost doubling (15% - 28%) in the UK between 1993 and 2019. Now, I realise that correlation does not imply causation, and there were certainly other things going on at the time that would have contributed to this change. But it is interesting that the timelines correlate so closely.

Do carbohydrates cause obesity? No. Could eating 11 portions of starchy carbohydrates every day contribute to the development of obesity? Abso-freakin-lutely.

Let's recap: we need 0g of dietary carbohydrate per day to thrive. We have been given (bought and paid for) advice to eat up to 11 servings of starchy carbohydrates a day. Now, well over 50% of all adults in England are either overweight or obese. From here it doesn't look like great advice.

I am not suggesting that we should stop eating starchy carbohydrates. Even though we do not need to eat any carbohydrates at all, if you eat a healthy balanced diet of mostly plant foods (vegetables, fruit, legumes, nuts and seeds, whole unfrefined grains) you will get plenty of complex carbohydrates as all plant foods contain carbohydrates. I am suggesting that we do not need 11 portions of starchy carbohydrates per day, that we do not need to 'base' our meals on potatoes, rice, pasta and other starchy carbohydrates, and that we do not need to eat all the highly processed, refined, simple carbohydrates we are sold. I am suggesting that we can be satiated, satisfied and thrive on fewer carbohydrates than we think (or have been taught).

I am suggesting that our balanced plates should look more like this: