Confusion in Nutrition

The speaker brining up the current adaptation of portion measurements from MyPyramid to MyPlate brought to memory my own experience tracking my diet for PF&W (PE course at TTU) classes. I couldn't find the USDA page when they changed it, but once I found out it changed to MyPlate, I took note of the changes over the years- the stacked brick pyramid, to the scalene pyramid, to the current model. Each one changing the way we visualize where those lie in our diets. If I remember correctly, part of the idea of moving from the one I grew up seeing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_(nutrition) to MyPyramid en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPyramid was to change form ambiguous "servings" to ounces and mitigate the confusion of fats and oils and sugars being at the top and things higher up on the pyramid receiving a perception of their importance rather than the idea that the serving sizes get larger as you go down the pyramid. I guess what I'm trying to direct this at is this idea that how we communicate nutrition and food concepts to the public is of utmost importance due to the widely diverse audience who might utilize these guides or recommendations. Just because an item is high up doesn't give it "dominance," and yet some people mistakenly thought this was so. This can be no more obvious when one looks at all the items labeled "Diet ________." Diet soda, diet dressing, diet ice cream all still carry calories. In fact, diet ice cream imho creates a potentially dangerous point of confusion (I have actually heard of the following actually happening). Some lady of high BMI was told she needed to lose weight and it was determined that she needed to go on a diet and eat less calories. The patient came back some time later and was actually heavier, and the physician was perplexed why the patient had gained weight. "Did she not listen to a word I said?" "How can she be so non-compliant?!?" These were some of the thoughts in the doctor's mind. However upon delving deeper, the physician discovered that the patient had done a good job switching many regular items for diet items. However, though she had changed from regular ice cream to diet ice cream, she thought that she could eat more of it. The patient during that time consumed more ice cream than she was used to and gained even more weight despite the fact that she thought she was doing the right thing and could eat more diet ice cream since it was "more healthy" and "not as bad for you" as regular ice cream. This certainly stresses the point to being in tune with patients and the population when educating on nutrition and developing plans for healthier behaviours. 


I posted these articles for fun as not only do just removing sugar/high fructose corn syrup and replacing it with artificial sweeteners not detract the other calorie sources still present (the fat and other carb calories) in food items. But there still seems to be uncertainty and a paucity of evidence demonstrating the impact these artificial sweeteners have on ours and other organisms (our commensal flora) metabolisms. Do these sugars provide inhibitory or competitive effects on our normal metabolic pathways? Just some food for thought.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951976/

www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-drinks/artificial-sweeteners/

articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/12/23/artificial-sweeteners-confuse-body.aspx