Ep 208 Dietary Guidelines Part 1: Who’s behind these guidelines?
This Podcast Will Kill You
Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts
4.8 • 17.7K Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2026
⏱️ 58 minutes
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Summary
Over the decades, dietary guidelines have taken a diverse array of shapes, from pamphlets to wheels, from plates to pyramids. In many cases, the shapes have changed more than the recommendations they contain. This week and next, we explore those recommendations - who’s making them, how they have changed over time, and how closely they align with what we should be eating. First, we delve into the long history of dietary guidelines and how their intentions have evolved as the food landscape drastically changed over the 20th century. Then we interrogate the conflicts of interests at the heart of their formation, questioning how much these recommendations are backed by science vs industry interests. Ultimately, we come back to the question of “if few people actually use these guidelines, why should we care about them at all?” Turns out, we have lots of feelings on the matter.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is exactly right. |
| 0:06.0 | How can the housekeeper tell whether or not she is providing the food which her family needs |
| 0:11.5 | and is getting the best possible returns for the money she spends? |
| 0:15.4 | Unfortunately, the price she pays for food is no test of the nourishment it yields to the body. |
| 0:22.7 | Tomatoes at five or ten cents a piece in winter do not build body tissues nor furnish fuel for the body engine any better than |
| 0:28.6 | those at five cents a quart in the summer. Appetite is not always a safe guide. A child's appetite |
| 0:35.1 | might be satisfied with a diet of nothing but sugar, but this certainly |
| 0:39.2 | would not be good for him. Neither can hunger and its satisfaction always be relied on. A bulky |
| 0:45.4 | diet of potatoes or bananas alone would soon make a person feel that he had eaten enough, |
| 0:50.2 | but would not furnish all that the body needs. Evidently, what a person who plans meals ought to know is what things the body needs in its food, |
| 0:59.0 | and how these needs can be fulfilled by the ordinary food materials. |
| 1:03.0 | This paper is intended to give such information in a simple way. |
| 1:07.0 | It should make plain that different kinds or classes of foods serve different uses |
| 1:12.1 | in the body and should help the housekeeper to choose those which will serve all these uses |
| 1:17.0 | without waste. It is very hard for a housekeeper to know exactly how much of each of the food |
| 1:22.7 | substances or nutrients her body needs or exactly how much of each she is giving them. In order to calculate |
| 1:29.2 | exactly how much starch, sugar, fat, protein, etc., the family needs, one would have to know |
| 1:34.4 | exactly how much muscular work each member was performing, and also exactly how much of the different |
| 1:40.2 | nutrients each food contained, and exactly how much each person would eat. |
| 1:44.9 | This, of course, would mean a great deal of figuring. |
| 1:48.1 | Fortunately, such exactness is not necessary in ordinary life. |
| 1:52.4 | If a little too much or too little of one nutrient is provided at a single meal or on a single |
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