The Food Groups

On a recent episode of Clone High Marilyn Manson had a guest appearance and sang a song about the food pyramid. This was an utterly bizarre, albeit highly entertaining, experience, and one that made me think "Hey, I haven't rated the food groups yet." Now, while the USDA has the food pyramid, in Canada we have Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating. Oh, and if you're wondering — it's a rainbow. I know what you thinking, and you're right: why doesn't this get mocked more often? Well, it's time to do something about that. And so I'm going to rate the food groups. Let the mockery commence.

Meat and Alternatives: The Guide advises two to three daily servings from this group, which is all fine and good if the serving sizes were a bit better defined. A serving of meat/poultry/fish is defined as being 50 to 100 grams. So does this make 150 grams three servings, or only one and a half? A serving of eggs is one to two eggs, so would a four egg omelet be two servings or four? And any strict vegetarians out there, remember to get your three servings of dry beans, lentils and nuts every day. Sounds really tasty. It's not that I eat red meat every day or anything, but if we aren't supposed to eat animals then why are they made of meat? A nice thick steak every so often is a Good thing.

Milk Products: I like milk. Not that I drink it, mind you, I put it on cereal and I'll drink chocolate milk and other milk related stuff from time to time, which reminds me, there's still some egg nog in the fridge (fun fact: in French, egg nog is lait du poulet, which means literally "chicken milk." How messed up is that?). And I especially love cheese. Cheese on pizza, cheese in lasagna, cheese on a sandwich, or just a slice of well aged cheddar, it's all good. I just ignore the fact that all this good stuff is made from liquid that came out of a cow. Humans are unique in that we drink the lactal fluids of another species. Pretty much just us and cats do that. And how exactly did the dairy lobby manage to swing getting an entire quarter of the food guide to itself? I'll bet the egg people are wishing they had pulled that off. Everyone knows that they're supposed to drink some milk every day, but who thinks "Gotta have an egg today." I sure don't. (That's hardly fair, as I hate eggs, and it's not because I have issues with eating chicken ovums, it's because they taste bad, but enough about eggs). And what about the 20 percent of the population that apparently experiences some degree of lactose intolerance? All this talk about consuming milk products has got to have them feeling Bad.

Vegetables and Fruit: Now while the USDA Food Pyramid splits these into two separate groups, in Canada we lump them together, and we think you should be consuming a lot of them. Five to ten servings every day. That's a lot of vegetables and fruit. Today I had some salad, it was maybe two servings worth, and if you count the tomato sauce in my lasagna that's maybe one more serving. That's three, and that's pretty typical for me. It's not that I don't like vegetables and fruit, but most vegetables take more time to prepare than I'm willing to invest, and as for fruit, I eat a fair number of bananas, and I do actually have some canned pineapple in the fridge right now, but I can't remember the last time I bought a dozen apples or oranges. And about the bananas, well, I generally don't get groceries more than once a week, and if I get bananas on Saturday by Wednesday they're looking pretty skanky, and that's assuming I got some that were still on the green side. Hey scientist types out there — anyone want to take a break from working on bovine growth hormone and splicing fish genes into wheat and bioengineer me a banana that will stay firm and yellow for an entire week? If you can do that, so I can buy seven on Saturday and eat the last one on the next Saturday before grocery time, well, I don't think there's a Nobel Prize for that, but if someone can do that I'll personally go and steal a Nobel medal for them. I know the economics one is somewhat Ugly, but a quick visit to www.nobel.se and a look at the most recent economics laureates leaves me thinking I can take any of them.

Okay, so now when I look up and see what I've written I realize that this is far more a rant about fruit and vegetables than a rating. Oh well. I'm sticking with Ugly.

Grain Products: I don't understand fad diets. A couple of years ago high protein diets came back in a huge way, everything from The Zone to the Protein Power Plan to other badly named alternatives. These all had essentially the same message: Protein good, carbohydrate bad. This message is of course oversimplified and wrong. If anyone out there swears by one of these diets, well, that's your problem. The food guide recommends five to twelve servings of grain products every day, which is more than the recommendation for any of the other groups. There's a reason for this. Grains have been a staple of the human diet for millennia, and while our ancestors may have been wrong about the world being flat and bleeding being a prudent medical practice, they were right about this one. We need a fair amount of carbohydrates to live, just as we need proteins, vitamins, minerals, water, and yes, even fat. A better diet idea than cutting out breads would be to cut back on the sugar-heavy sweets. And eating more whole grain products is Good for you.