Gastropod looks at food through the lens of science and history.
Co-hosts Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley serve up a brand new episode every two weeks.
Protein, Pyramids, and Politics: The Forgotten Stories and Controversial Science Behind Government Dietary Advice
ICYMI, our old friend the food pyramid has been flipped on its head. The Trump administration recently issued new dietary guidelines that it says will "revolutionize our nation's food culture." It's a bold claim—but since when has the government been in the business of telling us what to eat in the first place? How does it know how much of each nutrient will keep us healthy, and why are all the different forms of this advice—the Recommended Daily Allowances or RDAs, those Daily Values on food packaging nutrition labels, and the ever-shifting food pyramid—so confusing, and even contradictory? This episode, we're going back to the beginning to make sense of it all, with some help from pioneering women scientists, horses in obstacle courses, and, of course, Dick Van Dyke. Grab your climbing gear and join us to scale the food pyramid, wade through the swamp of alphabet soup acronyms, and, finally, figure out what this all has to do with what ends up on your plate.
Episode Notes
Hannah LeBlanc
Hannah LeBlanc is a historian of nutrition science. She is currently writing a book about the history of American government-sponsored nutrition projects during World War II and the Cold War.
Kevin Klatt
Kevin Klatt is an assistant professor in nutrition sciences at the University of Toronto. He covered the history of government nutrition recommendations in the US and the recent changes in his paper "Make America Healthy, Again? The Past, Present and Future of Dietary Guidelines." You can read his analysis of the new dietary guidelines and pyramid here.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for the Public Understanding of Science, Technology, and Economics
This episode of Gastropod was supported by a generous grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for the Public Understanding of Science, Technology, and Economics. Check out the other books, movies, shows, podcasts, and more that they support here.
The Burroughs Wellcome Fund
This episode of Gastropod was supported in part by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund for our coverage of biomedical research.
Transcript
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