Remember the old food pyramid?

My parents are in their 70's. They lived pretty up and down lives but I think that most people would say that their lives have been pretty reasonable as far as health is concerned. There were times when I was young that we ate whatever with zero concern for health. I recall sugar-loaded cereal being a mainstay in our pantry, as well as super-surgary drinks especially Kool-Aid being something that we always had in the fridge. Our dinners were always loaded with fat and carbs but the 80's and early 90's were a different time man, nobody even talked about carbs.

In fact, carbs were basically pushed on us with the food pyramid suggesting that we needed a ton of bread and pasta every day.

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It seems absolutely crazy these days that the government and the FDA or whoever was involved in the creation of this system as well as the indoctrination that went along with it, was actually telling us to eat up to 11 servings of pasta and bread EVERY DAY.

These days it seems as though almost no one, other than people who truly DGAF would chomp down on carbs like that all the time.

Back in those days the mindset was that spaghetti was healthy, and meat was not. Processed sugar was always and issue but I recall the packaging and what not was always advertising and even gloating about how some cookies, chips, or whatever else you can think of that you really probably shouldn't eat ever, was low in FAT... Nobody batted an eye about the carbohydrate content.

Nowadays we all now different, but at the same time I kind of wonder if we are being duped in a new direction these days. The governments that showed us this food pyramid never gave us an "our bad, we were wrong about that!" they just kind of stopped talking about it and stopped putting it in health classes in schools.

I'm reminded about how doctors recommended certain types of cigarettes depending on what sort of illness you had.

I don't know if I want to get on board with the keto stuff although there is a lot of information that points to it being good. For me, I feel like that sort of diet is just untenable for most people and the few folks I know that have tried it go on and off of it because it is 1) expensive to maintain and 2) you can't really go and do anything with anyone because nobody is going to have a "meat only" party

But it is quite shocking to me that all of us were taught this pyramid as gospel even though now you can basically flip that pyramid on its head and that is what people recommend today.

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There were times in my life where I was trying to lose a lot of weight after a period of getting quite fat, as well as times that I was trying to gain muscle weight later, where I subscribed to this point of view and stuck with it. I will say that it works quite well in both of these situations. However, I don't think that it leads to a very rewarding life.

Once I dropped the weight I started finding balance in my life and have been a lot happier.

I think if you can live about 75% of your life eating whole foods (the food type, not stuff from the store) you are going to be in the top 10% of people as far as food health is concerned.

If you have what it takes to do keto, there are a lot of people that have seen great things happen because of that. For me, this sort of diet is impossible because I love beer and will continue to drink it until doctors tell me that I will die if I don't stop.

Stay off the bread and pasta as much as possible I guess. Eat some fruit and veg and mostly, stay off processed sugars. I think if you do that combined with a couple hours of light exercise per week, you are going to have pretty great health.

And don't forget to live a little while you are doing all that as well. BEER!