Dark Secrets of the Food Pyramid

How Leftist European politics, bad science, and corporate greed created one of the biggest manmade disasters in history

by Richard Baimbridge

If you’re like me, you probably grew up being taught the Food Pyramid in your nutrition class at school. Although it wasn’t formally adopted by the USDA until 1992, the Food Pyramid, famously with its foundation of carbohydrates like bread, rice and pasta at the base and a tiny peak of fats, salt and sugar (with meat and dairy just below that) is etched into the minds of practically everyone in my generation.

But what’s not often discussed are the actual origins of the Food Pyramid, and how they were shaped by Leftist European politics, bad science, and nefarious corporate greed.

So, let’s start first with the Food Pyramid’s origins, which began in Sweden in 1974 – a time when Sweden was nearly as Marxist as the Soviet Union, with a tax rate in some cases as high as 100% and heavy rationing of “luxuries” like meat and butter. A good way to silence protests over high prices and shortages of those goods is to convince people that they’re bad for you – and that’s exactly what Sweden did.

The first Food Pyramid was created at the request of the Swedish government by Anna-Britt Agnsäter, a popular Swedish cookbook author and television personality. Her pyramid idea soon took off in Sweden, and later around the world (including the USA) where it was adopted by the US Dept of Agriculture in 1984, with the actual guidelines being introduced into public education even earlier.

But unfortunately for Agnsäter (and anyone who took her advice), you can plot a chart that matches perfectly with the introduction of the Food Pyramid and a steady upwards explosion in obesity rates and diabetes, both in Sweden and across the globe, wherever it was introduced. As we now know, carbohydrates quickly break down into glucose, spiking blood sugar and causing inflammation. Basically, the Food Pyramid is upside down.

You might forgive Agnsäter, who arguably had good intentions and simply lacked a modern understanding of nutrition. But it’s hard to be so forgiving of what came next – a cynical campaign by corporate food lobbyists who knew full-well that the chart was flawed, yet intentionally made it even worse in the sole interest of profits.

According to Dr. Luise Light, head nutritionist in charge of developing the Food Pyramid in the USA, the project was completely blind-sided by lobbyists and “sold to the highest bidder.”

“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,” she says, citing language that favored processed foods over fresh meat and vegetables, and a whopping increase from their suggested 3-4 servings of carbs per day to 6-11 servings.

By 1978, the USDA began recommending an increase in carbohydrates from 28 percent to over 48 percent of total energy intake, while heavily promoting use of seed oils over natural fats – despite conclusive studies showing that replacing saturated fat and animal-based proteins with vegetable oil did nothing to lower heart disease, but rather in fact increased both heart disease and death rates.

The demonization of protein, fats, saturated fats, natural oils and cholesterol still persists to this day, as do the rampant misconceptions. Recent clinical studies, including a 2020 Harvard research study, found “low evidence” that red meat is dangerous to your health in any way whatsoever – whether it’s organic/grass fed meat or not. Once common claims such as red meat being tied to diabetes have also been disproven, while red meat consumption has in fact been shown to decrease inflammation and increase fertility rates.

What is indisputable, however, is the devastating effects that sugar – and especially processed sugars – have on your body. Yet almost everything you buy in the grocery store, from sodas to pasta sauce to supposedly “healthy” snacks like yogurt and granola bars are packed with more of it than suspicious white powder on a Colombian submarine – or worse, high-fructose corn syrup. Next time you go to the grocery story, see how often you find “high-fructose corn syrup” on the ingredients label. It’s basically the methamphetamine version of refined white sugar.

Despite all the noise you hear in the media these days about the dangers of red meat and the glorious future of eating insects, they tend to gloss right over the high-fructose corn syrup that’s in nearly everything you touch in a supermarket. At the same time, they celebrate “fat positivity” (for women, anyway) with obese swimsuit models and TikTok influencers, as the pharmaceutical industry rakes in billions off of Ozempic.

Almost makes you think they have a hidden agenda, doesn’t it? Oh, by the way, guess who sponsored the American Heart Association at the time it started promoting vegetable oil as a replacement for lard, butter and other natural fats? Procter & Gamble – makers of Crisco vegetable oil shortening. …But then, I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

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