Most Americans believe that Public Health Officials and their dietary directives caused the obesity problem. They blame the Food Pyramid which prioritized our biggest crops: corn, wheat, and soybeans. So, what are the Public Health Officials telling us to eat in 2023? To find out, I reviewed the U.S. Government Dietary Guidelines. This 164-page document is undigestible. It seems there is a recommendation that only 1% of our calories should come from green leafy vegetables! On the other hand, ten bags of spinach contain only 100 calories! But the most important part is that the Government NEVER suggests downsizing overall quantity. The terms used are “eat more of these nutrient-dense foods” and “eat less of these high-fat foods.” The recommendations still downgrade taste by prioritizing low fat. Only recently has this major food group been rebranded to include “healthy” fats.
Obviously, eating low-fat foods affected our palates just when Asian and European cuisines and flavors were coming to us. Previously, foods such as sushi, calamari, and brie cheese were unknown. Our American foods were typically cooked with Crisco. Despite our unsophisticated palates, Americans rejected the tasteless fat-free foods. As we all know now, food manufacturers added lots of sugar to compensate for this loss. Remember SnackWell cookies? No one suggested that eating fewer high-fat foods would reduce fat consumption. Instead, new recipes were developed. Burdened with all the confusing nutritional information, Americans lost interest in educating their taste buds. Today only very salty or fatty or sugared foods taste good in the majority of mouths.
Let’s not forget how soda was manipulated. Natural sugar was replaced by high fructose corn syrup. HFCS is cheaper to use than real sugar. Corn is the number one crop in the U.S. In 2021, American farmers produced 15.1 billion bushels! Of course, the biggest lie is the BMI. Many people do not know that the BMI is a 300-year-old formula devised by Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian statistician, to define the characteristics of a “normal man.” The BMI was tailored to a “normal” male circa 1800 in Belgium.
The BMI enables super-sized bodies. Prior to adopting the BMI in 1985, the formula MDs used was called Hamwi. Typically, a person who doesn’t like the former has never heard of the latter. Hamwi says a woman who is five feet tall should weigh 100 pounds and each inch of height adds five pounds. A five-foot tall man starts at 106 pounds; add six pounds for each additional inch. Easy right? But the CDC’s explanation for the change was that the BMI was simpler even though calculation required knowing square roots and the metric system.
Even though the BMI is our official standard, no one likes it because a 325-pound muscled man with practically no fat is labeled obese. True. This formula doesn’t work for NFL players. But a 5’6” female at 185 pounds has a BMI of 29.9 which means she is NOT obese. She is only overweight which is not a health risk. At least until Covid hit us in 2020. So rather than being restrictive for the 99.9 percent of the population NOT in the NFL, the BMI is totally permissive and forgiving. The American BMI gives us a 20–25-pound cushion (other countries are not so liberal).
Now 100 million Americans have fatty liver disease; about 40 million have diabetes; and 96 million are pre-diabetic. And the World Health Organization suggests we forget the BMI and switch to Waist Circumference measurement. A 35-inch female waistline is obese. The average American female has a 38.7-inch waistline. Obviously, given these official numbers we are not 42.5 percent obese. The real number is closer to 65% obese. So why does our government hide the real stats when the U.S. Military has called obesity a threat to National Security? Yes, we can blame “all you can eat restaurants” and unlimited buffets which are the obvious Gluttonies. But there is another reason why the Hamwi was dropped in 1985. At that time, the public health crusade was not directed at fatness. Smoking was the target. The tobacco companies had been sued by a group of Southern lawyers (John Grisham’s novel Runaway Jury tells this story). We took cigarettes out of our mouth and replaced them with overeating.
Today few know that America was a smoking culture. Even if one didn’t actually smoke, eating behavior was impacted positively. It was accepted that smoking sped up the metabolism; relaxed the mind; gave the smoker something to do with their hands and mouth, i.e., an ADULT Pacifier. And then history. We know that humans smoked for at least 4000 years prior to this abrupt cessation. In other words, we threw out the baby with the bathwater. Secretly, officials knew that anyone who stopped smoking would gain weight—usually 15-20 pounds.
Now we are back to smoking since pot has been legalized. What should happen next is that electronic cigarettes are cleared so that all who need an adult pacifier can use one anywhere. Maybe then the “stress” word won’t be given as the reason for so many issues. Maybe cortisol levels will drop as one relaxes by exhaling. We know that Dr. Fauci knows the real obesity stats. But in the beginning of Covid, did any government official know that obesity was such a huge risk factor for complications?
So now this road map to obesity has to include the impact the Covid shutdown of our economy. In March 2020, I wrote that a few more lives would be saved, but the rest of us would wish we were dead by the end. And now we have to face the consequences of this poor decision which was based on the real obesity stats and not the published ones. Our Government printed trillions of fake dollars to inject into the economy. Interest on this huge debt is close to $45,487 a second or $3,939,990 per day!!! It’s not a stretch to say that covering up obesity so America could continue its gluttony has led to a far worse situation.
But salvation is coming with the Miracle Pills and portion control. The authorities know the real stats which is why obesity was granted disease status so the insurance companies have to cover the meds. Even I who saw this cover-up was amazed when Bloomberg News reported in a recent article, “Weight-Loss Drugs Seen to Save Airlines Millions.” The Airlines are planning ahead for when they no longer have to transport huge bodies. And then there is the Federal Aviation Administration who knows their body weight algorithms are insufficient, particularly for smaller planes. Of course, they do not want to initiate weighing passengers even as the pilots express concern. And who remembers that a plane crashed in North Carolina in 2003 because of excess passenger weight.
So once again, science will save us—just not nutritional science. Sorry, wellness lovers.
Article by Joan Breibart, President of PsychicalMind Institute and inventor of 80Bites.