Our overlords are having a big start to the year with the release of their 2025 dietary guidelines and potential warning labels on alcohol. They first tried instructing us how to eat back in the 1940s with the Basic 7 food guide. Interestingly, this was actually implemented due to rationing during World War II and was advising us to eat more to ensure we got adequate nutrition. This reverse-modern-reductionist approach even told us to eat any other foods we want!
They simplified things a bit in the 1950s, as 7 was felt to be too many categories to manage for us simpletons, so they changed it to the Basic 4:
Meat, dairy, grains, and fruits and vegetables! The good ole days of classic American eating! But that wasn’t enough for our overlords. Obesity and diabetes rates at this time were nearly nonexistent, so they decided it’s best to keep telling us how to eat, but switched it up a bit to change it from four equal squares, taking things up a notch in the 1970s when the food pyramid surfaced (though the official pyramid was released in 1992). The simple four equal boxes turned into to an incredibly bottom-heavy pyramid recommending endless breadsticks and daily carb loading at Olive Garden became our food d’jour as they recommended an unfathomable to 6-11 servings of bread and cereal per day. The lumping of nutrients dense fats, part of most real foods that have been available for humans throughout our entire history with nutrient-sparse sweets that surface only recently, would have lasting disastrous effects that still dominate medicine. The rest is history:
The first release of the official dietary guidelines was in 1980, a big year that included the release of The Shining, the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, the Phillies first championship, and, perhaps most importantly, the birth of yours truly. As you can see below, much like the Phillies, the guidelines knocked it out of the park immediately as we watched skyrocketing rates of obesity and obesity-related diseases follow:
Though I have looked at this graph hundreds of times, the immediate and sharp jump in rates of obesity and extreme obesity starting at that exact date is still unbelievable. The new 2025 guidelines are remarkably similar to the old recommendations, albeit now thoroughly influenced by academia and bureaucracy as they have been marinated with the modern academic hors d’oeuvres of words salads, phrases, and blatant vegetable-oil based BS that is used to dress up the same old limp piece of lettuce. Much like a description of modern art, when there ain’t no substance, just throw some academic words at it! Throughout their lack of evidence-based recommendations they also demand more “evidence-based programs and policies” and more government oversight and then float their own boat about prior public achievements. The whole document reads like an insane echo chamber, one from a paralleled universe where humanity did not morph into a difference species within the last 44 years. The insanity from our overlords is basically guaranteed at this point, and they continue to document it in writing.
For instance, I think I am doing a good job as a parent based on their description of Structured Autonomy Support Feeding Practices and Structured Support Feeding Patterns. However, as I read further, I may also be utilizing Controlling Feeding Practices, which reflect caregiver-centered control of and dominance over children’s eating; such practices may include use of restriction, pressure to eat, threats, bribes, and using food to control negative emotions. Buit at the same time, I may actually have no clue what the hell any of these gobbly gook means. It’s strange. In the 1950s we were too dumb to understand 7 food groups so they decreased it to 4. Now they are writing child psychology dissertations to rationalize the same food recommendations based on nonexistent data from the 1940s.
This painting is really an external manifestation of pure genius, as the artist so thoroughly combined Structured Autonomy Support with Feeding Practices while intertwining Structured Support Feeding Patterns. I can fully comprehend why it was sold for $120 million. I feel even smarter looking at it, and frankly, people that don’t understand this painting simply aren’t a genius like me. They probably like that ridiculous junk called art in the Uffizi Galleries in Florence.
We won’t get further into the guidelines here as they are all basically the same lots of grains mumbo-jumbo, meat is bad, eat plant based, good for you and the environment, poop on your cultural foods, food pyramid in disguise, reductionist strategy while recommending foods that lead to overeating to a population prone to overeating, etc. etc. Frankly, if you are still relying on these sultans of strikeouts to guide your health choices, it should not be surprising if you are part of the statistic above.
Even though they ask for more money, it’s not that they aren’t trying to spend as much of our money as possible on our “healthcare”:
OK, actuality it is very much that they are spending so much. The spending also—and I am sure this is totally a coincidence—skyrockets right around the time the pyramid surfaces. But it’s even more frustrating that they are constantly so darn bad at managing it:
As I am a physician, I know little of economics and “those kinds of things” as I spend my whole life writing 15-page notes to justify getting paid by insurance, but an 818% increase in spending to see climbing rates of cancer and chronic disease and the same heart disease as 1950 seems like something isn’t working here. If we are spending billions on batting coaches for Johnnie, and he keeps striking out, at some point you have to find Johnnie a nice seat on the bench. It would be even stranger if Johnnie started writing batting guidelines for the rest of us, telling us how awesome he is doing at batting and how we should bat like him.
We, as a society have gotten so unhealthy and obese eating our government food pyramid-approved red dye number 5 plant-based public-school supplied diet of garbage, toxic chemicals, mixed with sugar, that the only way to let the air out is to stick a needle in it (a needle full of Ozempic, of course, at least according to the mafiosi pharmacy benefit managers). The same government fattens us up with sugar-filled candy and soda at their own tax-funded hospitals and zombifies our children with Ipads at age 5 at their own tax-funded daycares, I mean schools. Yet, these K-kings still have the audacity to think they have the authority to still tell us how to be healthy. The rest of us normal humans would quite down and hide under the covers after spending so much money to be so wrong for such a long time. Not these folks, they just keep coming back with more.
The only way to get them to disappear is to stop paying attention. We see it happening with the fear-porn media and news. When the game is fixed, stop playing it. Focus on the infinite game and ignore the gulls that try to pull you into the madness.
The saga reminds me of the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, which coincidentally came out the same year as the Food Pyramid. Alec Baldwin tells the struggling Jack Lemon as he pours himself a cup of coffee, “Put that coffee down, coffee is for closers.” It’s no time for the K-kings to be telling us what to eat, how to live, or frankly any health-related advice until they give us just one example why we should listen to them.
Colorful Foods and Other Fallacies
This reminds me of a quick story, and then you can get on to the rest of the newsletter. Recently, we had our bedroom tiled with terra cotta and darkish gray grout in herringbone pattern (best floor ever), We grouted about half the floor and our guy did the other half. One of the bags was labeled wrongly as it was light gray, leaving an off strip in the middle of the room. We ended up purchasing some darker grout dye to fix the issue. However, after reviewing the ingredients, I was concerned as it contained titanium dioxide, and I didn’t want this released from furniture rubbing on it.
This is when an unexpected deep dive began. Titanium dioxide, derived from the mineral titanium is referred to as titanium white due to its pigmentation. This property has led it to be used to dye certain compounds white, which is apparently a valuable property as it is used in two-thirds of all pigments. It is most commonly used in paint (a la my grout coloring), plastics, cosmetics, and finishes, but can also be found in sunscreen and, yep, many of the foods we eat. It is most commonly put in the following foods to make them whiter, more colorful, or to “enhance” their flavor:
- Food packaging (where most terrible chemicals can be found)
- Pastries
- Candy
- Sauces
- Yogurt / Dairy Products
- Spreads
- Cereal
- Fruit
- Vegetables
- Meat
- Fish
- Beer and wine
In other words, a chemical I was concerned about putting on my floor grout is put in our food without concern to make it look “better.” While we should be avoiding a lot of the foods listed above, the usage of it in actual real food like meat and vegetables is total insanity. It is now banned in food in many countries, including throughout the EU, but the good Old US of A still puts it in many foods. Our government loves to tell us how to eat, but has no problem with us eating a paint colorant. Where is titanium dioxide on the Food Pyramid? It has been labeled as safe by the companies that make billions of dollars off of it, but data has shown a potential association with inflammatory bowel disease and colon cancer. I am clearly not stating the following is from titanium dioxide, but while we are showing a lot of graphs, check out these two from the CDC:
Avoid meat, a food full of protein and vital minerals and nutrients but don’t sweat eating titanium dioxide and other chemicals that have no right to be in our food. If this does not illustrate the insanity of our current society and its utter lack of respect for our food and health, I don’t know what does. But don’t worry, eat away at your food with the same chemicals in my floor grout, the government is going to make you healthy with their oversight, regardless of all the data over the past half century.
Before I get off of my soapbox, I have a couple more points to make so stay with me here. It always infuriates me how the government constantly picks on food as a scare tactic. How about toxic chemicals? Car exhaust fumes are strongly associated with cancer, should you ban them? Are you OK with our kids riding to school in giant yellow exhaust machines whose brake pads contained asbestos up until a couple years ago? How about when they idle their diesel engines in the parking lot full of children? You constantly go after those foods and cultural aspects of our lives. We have over 12,000 chemicals in our food (with 2,500 intentionally added), multiple dyes, asbestos and plastic throughout our homes, and we continue to hear how this or that food is an issue, particularly foods that are extremely nutrient and vitamin-dense.
Stop putting titanium dioxide and the other 1,000s of chemicals in my food and then let’s talk. In the words of Al Pacino in Glengarry Glen Ross:
“WHAT YOU’RE HIRED FOR, is to help us… does that seem clear to you?”
Put a label on yourselves as you are hazardous to our health. And while you are at it close your mouths as the hot air spewing out is bad for the planet, not our nutrient-dense foods full of vitamins and minerals.
It’s time for the government overlords to put down that cup of coffee, get the titanium dioxide out of our food, and stop giving us health recommendations.
© 2025 CDR Health and Nutrition, LLC. All Rights Reserved.