Looking at the Tuft website <a href="https://sites.tufts.edu/foodcompass/research/data/" rel="nofollow">https://sites.tufts.edu/foodcompass/research/data/</a> it's clear they were focusing on within-category ratings. Celery juice > apple juice and quinoa > tortillas is not going to surprise anyone. And for seafood, salmon has been promoted many times as a miracle diet food. I can't spot any obvious problems in these within-category charts.<p>If you take a within-category metric and try to selectively apply it across food groups then of course you will get weird results. Is a broad-band metric more useful? I'm not sure. There are meal replacement products (shakes, bars, etc.) but besides those I think you need to break down your diet into at least a few food groups - protein, vegetables, etc. Just taking a random selection of items will probably be deficient in some important nutrients.
The article is unfortunately an example of numerical illiteracy. The Tufts sites said, in general, fruits veggies legumes and seafood were healthier than all other categories. Within each category, they then ranked food from 1 to 100. Tufts did not say the healthiest grain (still bad for you) was better than steak. That is an incorrect reading.
At the risk of sounding pedantic but also not being a meat eater, is there a difference between steak and ground beef? Because steak is mentioned twice in this article (in the headline and once in the body), but the actual chart shows ground beef. This is in no way a defense of Lucky Charms (although they are magically delicious), but I was always of the perhaps false belief that steak is healthier than ground beef?
Like most everyone, I didn't believe in dropping the food pyramid and going keto/carnivore/atkins/whatever else the new fashionable name will be for dropping carbs.<p>However, the amount of change and the efficiency of the diet shocked me.<p>> After all, anyone can just ignore Tufts’ findings, because they’re obviously crazy. But in the field of public health this is precisely the kind of work that matters. Studies like this are what lead to the last half century’s famously misguided dietary guidelines, which have coincided with the sickest Americans our nation has ever seen.<p>It's appalling that we allow the people who came with the food pyramid to keep sprouting nonsense than can be disproved so easily. It's not just about wasting million, but the fact that bad science tantamount to misinformation has a government backing or public health seal that'll cause people to act on the obviously bad advice!<p>It's even more shocking that some countries like in the EU are trying to shame meat eating for global warming related reasons: at least there's a plausible link, even if I'd suggest prioritizing health over other concerns like agricultural subsidies, carbs lobbying groups and the weather.<p>But cheerios and lucky charm over steak FOR HEALTH REASONS? Nope.
the nih could decide to do nothing. Dont tell anyone how to eat. People then would eat however.<p>for anyone who has gone carnivore for more than a month you know how ridiculous this is. They as medical professionals know it as well. So why the disconnect, why the effort to misinform?<p>If tomorrow everyone switched to meat or nothing. There wouldnt be enough meat to feed the world. A very significant portion of the world would end up in the nothing category.<p>You make the effort beyond doing nothing and intentionally misinform because convincing people to eat plants is good for the economy.