I suppose the 1975 reference is to the federal guidelines for a balanced diet. That was before my time, and I can remember as a kid thinking- I’m never going to get 6-8 servings of rice/bread/pasta down in a single day.
The food pyramid was a good idea poorly executed. I have news for you- people were already eating like shit. Americans have “enriched flour” because we eat like shit. We have some friends from England (ENGLAND of all places) that complain about the quality of bread in America- because it is ALL made with enriched flour. Why is all of our flour enriched you ask? And what IS this enrichment? Flour is enriched with folic acid (among other nutrients like iron and niacin) in an attempt to prevent birth defects caused by imbalanced diets. If you eat a balanced diet, there is no reason for enriched flour or pre-natal vitamins. And, the birth defects those pre-natal vitamins are trying to prevent are already a done deal by the time the new mother knows she is pregnant. But, enriched flour was already a mandate by the 50s.
All of the various food lobbies got their fingers in the pie and turned the guidelines int a disaster.
“We can’t discourage people from eating salty snacks. That will kill the snack industry.
“Lump them in with pasta amd bread.”
“We should put meat and dairy together.”
“But that will discourage people from drinking milk and eating cheese, killing the dairy industry.”
“Ok, we’ll make dairy it’s own category.”
Etc, etc, etc. You can blame the govt because they were at the helm, but it was the lobby groups driving the train into the car carrier, creating a set of guidelines that suck tranny nuts harder than a modern toaster.
Poorly executed isn't really correct.
It was known bad from the very start.
Back in the day when the country used real sugar, the price of sugar would often fluctuate wildly depending on crops / embargoes against other countries and a host of other things. This made politicians unhappy because if the price of food started going way up during an election year, it might be bad for their re-election. So they decided to get the country hooked on high fruitcose corn syrup to level out prices and keep the corn farmers in their pockets.
Health of the nation be damned, and it did exactly that, damned the health of the country.
Then as a second hit, way back 50+ years ago it was well known (including to the evil government food control types) that sugar and to a certain extent heavily processed carbohydrates were what would make you obese and that fat was perfectly fine.
BUT the guys with the fats (meat producers) didn't have nearly as much political pull or as big of a voting block for the Democrats as the Corn farmers and other grain farmers. So the government declared a "war on fat" which from the very start, everybody who decided to push that lie, KNEW it was a lie, and knew it was the opposite of the truth and knew what it would do to the nation. BUT money and greed were all they cared about.
So they pushed "low fat" stuff packed with high fruitcose corn syrup, salt and highly processed carbohydrates and "butter substitutes" that were little better than industrial waste and the country paid the price for the greed and ambition of the few.
Horribly evil was what they did to the Children of this country where the government BANNED serving the kids whole milk, which would have been the best thing for them. Instead the children were made to choose between Orange Juice and "Chocolate" "Skim" "Milk" loaded with HFCS.
That exploded childhood obesity and childhood diabetes and ruined a whole generation or more. And they still push that B.S. to this day.
You ever wonder why kids could drink soda back in the 50s and be normal but today they all look like little jaba the huts?
High Fruticose Corn Syrup plays a HUGE role in that.
Here is a good almost 2 hour course on it:
