If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews. They flipped the food pyramid. In this episode, we're comparing the new one to the old one. We're breaking it down, and we're going to tell you what we agree with and what we disagree with. By the way, we have a Whole Foods guide that'll help you with your nutrition, get leaner, and build muscle with some of the easiest steps you'll ever take with a diet that are also the most effective. Go to wholefoodsguide.com. Get it. It's totally free. By the way, this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, ButcherBox. They deliver grass-fed meats, wild-caught fish, heritage pork to your door. If you want quality meats, quality protein, healthy meats, and you want good prices, here's what you do. Go to butcherbox.com forward slash mindpump. 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Enjoy the rest of the show. for over 30 years the government told us to eat 6 to 11 servings of bread and pasta a day they told us fat was the enemy and we got fatter and sicker than ever before but something just happened that we never thought we'd see the government just admitted hey we're wrong and they released a new food pyramid that actually makes sense let's get into it okay so when this news came out uh excited are you guys pumped about it is it whatever like how's your how do you feel about it oh uh i think it's a nice change big i think it's a move in the right direction for sure yeah especially in uh when you contrast it to it's almost flipped upside down literally almost the opposite that's right so i thought it was a total uh move uh in the right direction Yeah. And initially I think I had the reaction of what, who cares who reads the food pyramid anyways, this is all, you know, whatever it doesn't make, I don't think, but, but I mean, it is, it is taught in schools and you know, there is the argument that I believe you made this when I was like, I don't think it matters that much. And I'm slowly being convinced that, okay, part of why I probably feel that way is because I've been taught off of and I grew up with a society that was taught from the old food pyramid. And if we start teaching our children this stuff and we educate more people on it, does this make an impact? And I think the reason why I felt jaded early was that I think if this is a real positive thing, it's going to take a while before we actually really feel the impact of just how positive it is. Yeah. One thing was like a lot of the food contracts and the businesses that they would bring into the schools are going to have to change and the priorities of that. So I think, you know, at least looking into it and the restructuring of how, you know, we introduce kids to what the priorities are with food, I think it's a positive. Well, so the government policy had a profound impact on people's understanding of what was healthy, what was unhealthy, and the market. Because you guys remember, so this is 1992 when this original food pyramid came out. Which, by the way, when this food pyramid came out in 1992, it wasn't groundbreaking in the sense that they had been communicating some of these things for a long time already. So it's not like they came out of the food pyramid and said, suddenly fat is bad for you. That had been communicated for a while. This just became kind of official kind of nutrition policy. But because of government policy, people were afraid of fat and food companies would kind of follow suit. And so you saw a lot of low-fat foods, nonfat foods, milk, skim milk is super popular. Everybody was afraid of eating eggs. People stay away from meat and grain-based products completely exploded. And this was a direct result of this. Now, the new pyramid, I think, is also not groundbreaking in the sense that I think a lot of people are already figuring these things out. I think the fitness industry, the health industry has been communicating some of these things for a while. And so now the government policy is kind of following suit. Nonetheless, it's going to just speed up what people have been figuring out for a long time. So can we pull the old one up so we can look at, break down exactly what it, because I remember at the very bottom was the grains. and it was like... That was like the most, six to 11 servings a day. Yeah. By the way, what are the big... Can you just think of that first? Six to 11 servings of grains per day? Yeah. What is that, by the way? Lots of pastas and braids. Here's the other part of this that I think is interesting. Like, what's a serving? Yeah. I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not clearly defined. Because I think of a serving is an amount of something that you have at a meal. Right. So six to 11 servings of grains, it sounds like a lot. It just basically... like six to 11 meals that are heavily based in grains well what it is is that most of your this is like the majority of your plate remember how they made my plate oh the my plate was the follow up a little later yeah and so it's just the majority of our plate is made up of grains here's and i'm just gonna just gonna take a little segue before we come back um here's why this was a big problem uh it's not necessarily that grains aren't good for you uh it's really because okay we can make the argument that animal products, meats are better than grains. And I could, I could make that argument all day long. But the big issue is a majority of processed foods, the vast majority are grain based. Yeah. Okay. So a lot of people, so a lot of people's diets moved away from whole natural foods and towards processed foods. There's lots of processed foods that have servings of whole grain in them, like cereal, breakfast cereal, whole grain. Yeah. Cookies, whole grain. Pancakes. Yeah. Bread, whole process, really refined carbohydrate bread, whole grain or grain based. So this was the issue. This is why we created our whole food guide was I mean and we going to get into the new food pyramid but literally the most impactful thing you can do for your health and fitness without getting too complicated is to focus on eating whole natural foods, which will naturally eliminate a lot of these grains, by the way, a lot of them. Maybe you might have some rice, you might have natural limiters. I mean, a lot of the fiber and, uh, you know, and then obviously from the meats, you get that satiating effect as well, but it's like, it has these natural limiters in place. That's right. So we, we made a guide. It's wholefoodsguide.com, by the way. And when you go there, that really simplifies everything. And you just follow the steps on there, and you'll make some of the biggest impacts on your diet just from that. But I think that was the big, big issue. The new food pyramid takes the grains serving from 6 to 11 down to something like 2 to – I wrote it down here – 2 to 4. Yeah. And they also put an emphasis on cutting refined carbohydrates. So a third of what it was before. A third, and they said definitely avoid refined carbohydrates, which points even more closely to processed food. Yeah, to processed food, yeah. That's right. Right, right. Because again, if you look at the old food pyramid, it's like a lot of things fit on the bottom. Which would knock out things like cereals and bread. Yes. Yeah, and make it into things. Rice would be okay. Yes. Potatoes would be okay. Yes. Stuff like that. Yes. Yeah, yeah. But if you're eating like even bread, like even minimally processed, like sprouted wheat bread, it doesn't affect the body as much as like hyper-processed white bread. One of them has a much more of a satiety-producing effect on the body, whereas the other one tends to encourage overeating, which is the real big issue. How much better is, I mean, I remember as a young trainer thinking that choosing to eat wheat bread was a better choice than our white bread. I used to think that as well. So how much better or worse is it like brown rice to white rice? Yeah, they're super processed. But if you did like sprouted wheat, then it kind of makes a little bit of it. Well, yeah. I mean, if you did things like Ezekiel bread. There you go. By the way, when you try Ezekiel. It's very different. With nuts. Ezekiel bread does not. You're eating something that's not as processed. Yeah, I'm talking about like regular old rainbow wheat bread, whatever brand. You know what I'm saying? Same. It's just. One's brown. Yeah. I mean, that's just an example. Remember, they did the same thing with brown and white rice to us. It's just like you thought you were making such a better choice by having wheat bread instead of white bread, but it's just as processed. It's like splitting hairs at most. Right, right. At best. Right, right. The next big difference was the old pyramid really demonized fat. When you looked at the old pyramid, fats were at the top of the pyramid, meaning that's the thing. You said like sparingly. Yes, two to three servings, sparingly at the top. By the way, you know what this would come out to for a 2,000-calorie diet? So if you followed the old pyramid and you ate a 2,000-calorie diet, do you know how many grams of fat if you followed their old pyramid? Well, that was 20 grams. No, no, no, no. It's about 20 grams times 9. The limit would be. How about 180 calories? I wrote it down. So I wrote down the exact amount. The limit would be about 65 grams a day total. That's the limit. Yeah, times how many calories per gram. 65 grams of fat. Yeah. So you're talking about 150 to 200 calories. So a 2000. That's nothing. And here's what's crazy. As a personal trainer, if I had somebody eating. Be low, that's low. That's low. That's like you're at the bottom. Like we need to get those fats up. Yeah, you know the effects of that if you're deficient. It's essential. Yeah, it's essential macronutrient. You need fats for fatty acid, for the fatty acids. You need fats for fat-soluble vitamins. when fats are too low, which 65 grams of fat is borderline at a 2,000 calorie diet. In my experience with clients, clients would experience things like their hair wouldn't look so good. Their joints wouldn't hurt. They wouldn't have as much energy. Appetite would go up. It's not great at all. The new pyramid, no limit. There's really no limit to the fat so long as it's coming from kind of whole natural sources. Is that what it even says? It doesn't say that. Wow. They don't give you a limit. crazy they don't really give you a limit they don't say like limit it they say uh you know as long as it comes from whole natural sources essentially so you know olive oil avocados butter is okay steaks meats are okay fish is okay yeah whereas the old pyramid even if it was like salmon or avocados no no you got to keep it down yeah to this real low amount that's how bad the old the old pyramid was yeah yeah that's so crazy uh then protein this is where it gets a big difference. So I did the math on the protein. So the old, the 1992 pyramid had protein at about two to three servings. The new pyramid has protein at the top, basically every meal. So every meal needs to have protein in it. Whereas before it was two to three servings a day. For a 170 pound man, okay, the old pyramid, you want to guess how many grams of protein that were recommended for a 170 pound man uh from 90 servings yeah 90 80 yeah 61 oh my god bro yeah yeah 61 grams man if you're a 170 pound guy and you're trying to improve your health and fitness get stronger burn body fat have any kind of satiety dude and you're eating 61 grams of protein a day it's gonna be it's gonna be tough yeah that's gonna be really really tough yeah now you're eating essential you're having enough to not die from too little protein but i mean we're paying the picture now of what this diet look like when you follow the old yeah you're removing the essential macronutrient dude your meal is like it's like three bites of chicken breast a loaf of bread and like what else yeah was this the media glass of juice yeah yeah and a glass of juice or something like that yeah i mean crazy yeah that's that's not so we grew up with yeah the new one the new one doubles it more than doubles it so 170 pound man would have 123 grams of protein and i'd still say that's minimal which which is conservative it's yeah way better than the old but yeah way better than the old but i still think it's a little low so to get your back a little bit on this i mean it's been so wild for me to see how quickly uh the market responded and maybe that's primarily to your point that you made that you know it's not like uh the the the um well i'd say the general pop wasn't up to speed but we've been talking about high protein and fats are okay. It's definitely more mainstream. Yeah, it's way more. It's so crazy though right now. I don't know how much you guys are paying attention to this right now. I've brought it up a couple times in the show. All the protein options on menus. I mean, are you guys watching commercials and TV and stuff like that? I mean, Jack in the Box, Panda, Starbucks, they're all marketing high protein everything. So, I mean, they have high protein menus now, and their commercials are geared towards Chipotle. they're geared towards come in and get your 30 70 or 90 gram protein meal like they're all pushing this high protein uh message like and i mean what did this came out uh less than a month ago part of it is the the the mainstream is starting to become privy to the benefits of uh diet that's higher in protein the atkins diet i think taught people that fat wasn't scary yeah took a while top now it did make people think carbs were scary, which they not but definitely that fat is scary And then you have the GLP That right The introduction of GLP Yeah this is shaking up the entire industry That's right, because now the medical community is like, oh, if you're on GLP-1, you need to eat high protein to prevent muscle loss. So you just take a perfect storm now to where mainstream now is like high protein, high protein. So you can see lots of high protein, everything. Yeah. You know, coming out. I mean, I'm telling you, it is everywhere now. Yeah. Everywhere. Everywhere I go, I see it at gas stations. I see it at Starbucks now. I see it at the Panda. I see it at the Jack in the Box commercials, Chipotle. I'm not mad at it. No, no. It used to be so hard to find it. It's so crazy to see how quick that was. I mean, it felt like just the other day, we were constantly talking, but now it feels like everybody is on board now with that. Totally. In 1992, the pyramid, it said limit suites, but it really didn't say anything about processed food. It didn't mention processed food. The new one, it talks specifically about processed food. In fact, it says words, literally, these are the, quote, eat real food. So we finally have, and again, we have that whole food guide that talks about the power of whole natural foods, or should I say getting away from the dangers of ultra processed food. It's wholefoodguide.com, right, Doug? Doug, I want to make sure people get that. Yeah, Whole Foods. It's a free guide. I mean, I remember when we wrote this guide, we wrote this guide a long time ago. And when we first got together, and obviously we'd all been trainers for a long time before we had even got together and started the podcast. One of the things that was really cool, because we all have different backgrounds, we've trained a lot of different clients, but there was a handful of things that we had all come to the same conclusion on. You know, one of those being the way we program for our clients as far as the basic movements that we preach and talk about all the time. The other one was the diet advice. You know, and we all went through a phase where we used to write these elaborate diets and weird things that we create. Yeah, and meal plan for people. And we'd all got to this place where, no, if I just told my client to cut out the processed food, eat whole foods, I can give them an unlimited amount. like literally even less parameters than this just say no processed foods eat whole foods you hungry go for it eat a steak you want some you want a baked potato eat it have a baked potato just eat real whole foods and what we found was how much that naturally regulated their their calorie consumption and then the next that's the first huge layer that got them to lose the first like 20 pounds of fat then the next layer was just like go get protein yeah let's do those whole soup that was it like literally those two things cut our processed foods it's like 90 plus percent and it's like that gets 90 of your clients in great shape it's crazy you said 20 pounds on average if i had a client who had to lose uh you know a decent amount of weight if they just were consistent just with eating only whole natural foods and that's all they did between 15 to 20 pounds they would lose easy just what just happened easy and people need to understand this there's this myth that we have this like, we're like eating machines. We have this appetite that just makes us eat. If there's food in front of us, we'll just eat until we're overweight. That's not true. That's not true. We have natural systems. We have natural regulators of satiety that tell us to stop eating. The problem is we've engineered food to- To bypass it. Bypass it. We've taken food, we've understood and really broken down scientifically what's called palatability, right? The enjoyment you get from food, which includes its taste, but it includes many other things. And we've broke it down like a drug. And then we've engineered food using these principles. And the result of which being, if you eat processed foods, you eat more. So you'll feel satisfied with way more calories than you would if you ate whole natural foods. If you look at a picture, I actually saw a picture of this the other day. I saw a picture of the amount of potatoes in a big, large bag of potato chips. And there was a table with them. It was like five potatoes and then the bowl of chips. And which one do you think you could eat all of? Of course, it'd be the potato chips. By the way, people think calories are a regulator of appetite. That's not true. In fact, the potato chips would have more calories than the potatoes because the potato chips are fried in oil. And yet I could eat way more and faster. where I couldn't even finish the potatoes. So this is like a big deal. And the new food, this is the first time government policy has called out processed food, which is a big win because that industry, that food industry, that part of the food industry has a stranglehold on government policy because that's the moneymaker. Yeah, the entire way they make money is to make sure you keep consuming a lot of calories. And so it's like that's been the entire motivation is to just keep buying product. To piggyback off of what you said about how much processed foods are designed to hijack our body's natural senses of satiety, it's so obvious. I know you guys aren't really into it. I love the show. It's on the History Channel. Netflix picked it up afterwards. It's called Alone. And it's the one where they drop 10 contestants out of the middle. The last season that just went, they dropped them in the Arctic Circle, right? and there's moose, rabbit, some fish that they could possibly catch. And most of these people struggle just to get a meal a day. And when you watch them eat a boiled squirrel head, the happiness that they feel. Oh, my God. They need the nutrients. It's so crazy how much, and you as a consumer watching the television going like, it can't be that good. but it's like when you haven't had anything and you've eaten nothing but off of the land with no salt no seasoning no nothing like it was hard to get you're you it's it's crazy how much we've changed our palates yeah through even ourselves right and what we i would you know we consider i i consider myself a good eater i eat primarily whole foods but we still season up like crazy and i still eat processed foods to get make its way to diet and so we have changed our palate so much and it's so and i remember when uh that never really like i knew that like uh uh intellectually as a trainer but i didn't really understand to what level until i competed when i competed it was the first time in my life that i was so strict for long periods of time like like a year so in three years of like literally tracking and doing everything like and i remember going months of eating nothing but whole natural foods and i had to account for every single calorie and so eating processed anything makes it because they let it allow it to be 20 off i can't do that so and then i remember like here i am almost i'm 30 years old biting into an apple and i remember though i still remember thinking like whoa where did this one come from because it was so it felt it tasted so foreign to me because my whole life i grew up eating candy and things like that that it changed what vegetables and fruit tasted like that's right and it tasted so enjoyable and so rich and I thought wow that so crazy that I done that to myself We done that to ourselves We have And they engineered these foods so well and they so powerful that the brain reacts like it does to a drug in the sense that, this is why you notice this, is receptors start to downregulate. Your brain starts to perceive this overwhelming sensation of texture and flavor. and it starts to kind of numb it down a little bit so that when you go eat an apple, if you always eat apple candy all the time, an apple is going to taste bland because your brain has changed how it perceives things because it's getting blasted with these drug-like effects from processed foods. When you go off of them for a while, then you eat whole natural foods. You're like, okay. And so what happens is how your body regulates appetite and the food intake, it's so hijacked and so off the side effect is obesity and disease yeah and the only way to control it is either a count everything that goes in your mouth and hold on to everything with your hands real tight and live this really stressful crazy life which doesn't work or allow your natural allow your body to naturally work the way it's supposed to by sticking this is why this is why and i know we all agreed on this when we first got together why i didn't like if it fits your macros yeah doesn't take it doesn't count at all because because it doesn't take this part of an account and what for the listener who's never been able to stick to a quote-unquote diet for a long enough period of time to get themselves in that shape if if you don't put these crazy parameters and the only parameter you put is just eat whole foods eat as much as you want but just eat whole foods you do that long enough and those these those normal foods actually start to taste amazing and if you do it even longer than those other things you get a bit repulsed by and they're too overwhelming for your senses that's right and and it's easy to naturally but you let it creep in long enough and then they'll readapt again and the other part of the is this is that and this is again why i'm so excited about because it's it's not perfect i don't think the whole the new food pyramid is perfect and we'll get to that in just a second there's some things i would like to add, but I love that they said for the first time, avoid processed food. Eat real foods. I mean, people need to understand. It's a big deal. When you look at the food industry, the margins on potatoes are nothing compared to the margins on potato chips. The margins on wheat are nothing compared to the margins on crackers. In other words, processed foods have the big margins. They make the money. And those are the lobbyists. Those are the people that go in and pay for these new policies. So the fact that we came out and suddenly said, eat real food is really amazing and remarkable. Now here's where I think they should have gone. I think the protein recommendations, although they're way better. Should have been higher. I think they should have added, they should have made it higher. And I think what they should have said was, for people who are dealing with or worried about muscle loss, who are exercising or strength training or interested in weight loss, eat more protein and also eat it first. It makes a big difference. Other than that, I think they did. You know, the fruit and vegetable recommendations in there, relatively same from the 1992, which was okay. Yeah. So I think this is great. I think we're entering into a new era of awareness around food. Well, it's so cool to see this because when you think, I mean, I don't remember what year it was when we wrote the whole food guide. Because in the guide, we also help somebody who's never tried to do this. Like we take you steps there. It's not just like, here's a pyramid, follow this. It's like, here's how we recommend, how we used to coach clients through that process to get there. I mean, this is it. The difference is what you're saying right now is like that we have a higher recommendation towards the protein, but it's really close to this. That's right. So let's talk about practical applications. How can we do this? Number one, you're aimed for, if you're a woman, between 25 to 35 grams of protein per meal. If you're a man, about 45, 40 to 50, excuse me, grams of protein per meal. eat it first and then the rest can be whatever eat until you're satisfied single ingredient foods that's what a whole natural food is whole natural food is that's the thing meat that's the thing egg that's it uh you know apple that's it rice there it is potato there it is broccoli there it is when it has multiple ingredients if it has a long shelf life comes in a box or a wrapper this is called processed food by the way this is going to piss off people uh this also extends to the health food segment of foods that are processed, which you also see protein bars and shakes. And although they're in a different category, they're still in that processed food category. And so although I think there's use for them, especially for hitting protein targets and the like, the goal is whole natural foods. Eat the protein first. So to play devil's advocate or defend things like that, that we all admittedly use ourselves today. When I'm coaching a client, I want us to first do this. And then you learn to intermittently introduce those types, those other things like that. But if you want to get back to that place where you crave a vegetable or crave a fruit, which by the way, I thought was impossible because I had in my entire life. Because since a kid, I was introduced to candies and sweets and it was never not a part of my life until I got older. I didn't realize, and I know I'm not alone. I know I'm not alone on people that believe that fruits and vegetables are bland or boring or what that. But if you do this for an extended period of time, it changes into this enjoyable thing. Then once you've had that and you've changed that chemistry and then you now have that connection to it and a different relationship with it, then it becomes a primary source or the primary fuel that you use. And then occasionally I realize, oh, wow, I'm having a low day on protein. protein, I can have that protein shake to help me out there. And you're not going to switch from that to all of a sudden going other direction and you still realize teaching somebody that so they can feel it sticking to the whole foods first before you introduce those other tools. Totally. And again, I'm going to say it one more time here at the end. It's a free guide. It's a guide, the ultimate guide on whole food eating and diet. It's wholefoodsguide.com You can also find us on Instagram, Mind Pump Media. We'll see you there. Thank you for listening to mind pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB super bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB super bundle includes maps anabolic, maps performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now, plus other valuable free resources, at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes, and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support. And until next time, this is Mind Pump.
