I had a healthy diet, once. Or so I told myself.
Many years ago, I tore a page out of a magazine — an illustration of the FDA ‘Food Pyramid’ — and stuck it to the door of my refrigerator with some little magnets shaped like fruits and vegetables. My young nephew had left the magazine at my house; as I recall, it was from a Scholastic Junior magazine. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t notice the missing page; he didn’t seem like the kind of boy who spent much time reading magazines. Or thinking about his diet.
I also feared that my nephew might misinterpret the “Pyramid” and think that the stuff at the very top — candy bars, soda pop, cupcakes, potato chips — were actually the best things to eat, since they were, after all, at The Top. Sure, they were right next to the words, “Very Small Amounts”. But who reads words, when you can look at the pictures?
So I removed the page from his magazine. And stuck it on my refrigerator. I desperately needed to remind myself to eat healthy. Considering my weight, and various other factors.
I also liked the idea of happy foods that could sing, and jump rope.
The federal government had been studying nutrition for many years, and had produced thousands of charts looking similar to the one above, apparently with the idea that Americans would be healthier if they ate vast quantities of carbohydrates, meat, and dairy… with some vegetables and fruits thrown in to break the monotony.
Millions of these charts? I remember seeing them everywhere. Doctors’ offices. School hallways. The welfare office.
But about 15 years ago, I noticed that the food pyramid had undergone a change. The red meat had been demoted to the top “Use Sparingly” section, along with white bread. Milk and dairy had been reduced from “3 servings” to “1-2 servings” and could even be replaced by “Vitamin D/Calcium Supplements”. And healthy fats and oils had been promoted to the “Foundation” section.
I was pleased to see that “Alcohol in Moderation” had been added, although I didn’t appreciate the “Not for everyone” comment.
While this ideological revolution was taking place, however, the industrial food conspiracy was working behind the scenes to make us less healthy.
First, they selected several items from the “Use Sparingly” section of the new and improved pyramid — meat, bleached white flour, and salt — and covered it with tomato sauce and cheese (from the “Eat Only One Helping” section) and called it ‘pizza’. Then they figured out how to mass produce it in industrial factories.
And how to freeze it.
Next, they converted an entire aisle in the grocery store frozen foods section to frozen pizza, and “pizza-flavored food products”. The pizza products had a variety of brand names — DiGiorno, Freschetta, Totino’s, Hot Pockets, Red Baron, Amy’s, Tony’s, Palermo, California Pizza Kitchen, Tombstone, Bagel Bites, Newman’s Own, Celeste, Pizza Patrón — but they all came packaged with the same high tech feature: the Microwave Susceptor.
This amazing invention — gray, shiny plastic mixed with aluminum powder attached to a sheet of paperboard, patented by Pillsbury in 1980 — allows us to cook our frozen pizza (or pizza-related food) in a microwave and end up with a nice crispy crust instead of a gooey, soggy, doughy mess.
From the 1980 patent:
By contrast with the prior art, one major goal of the present invention is to find a way to provide an inexpensive and disposable microwave food heating container or package useful for shipping, heating and when desired to hold food as it is being eaten as well as to provide an improved method of distributing and heating foods with microwave energy…
The next step in the food revolution involved convincing the FDA to completely dismantle the food pyramid, and replace it with a “Plate”.
Although you might easily think this official federal government image is talking, here, about Vegetables, Fruit, Grains and Protein… in fact, the image has been subtly designed to appeal to your subconscious mind, and make you think of pizza slices… sitting on a disposable paper plate, hot out of the microwave.
Why there is a plastic fork in the picture, I have no idea. No one eats a pizza with a fork.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.