Some recommendations on diet and nutrition are misguided because they are based on inadequate or incomplete information. That wasn’t the case for the USDA's pyramid. Its recommendations were wrong because they ignored solid evidence on healthful eating and aimed to please various food lobbies.

     The Food Guide Pyramid’s most health-damaging faults were:

     • All fats are bad. Wrong: some fats are good for you and are even essential for life (see chapter five). The Food Guide Pyramid’s recommendation to use fats “sparingly” helped foster the phobia about fat that led many Americans to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

     • All “complex” carbohydrates are good. The Food Guide Pyramid ignored the fact that some kinds of carbohydrates are significantly less healthy than others. Eating too much of the wrong kinds of carbs and too little of the right kinds can set you up for weight gain, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease.

     • All protein sources are equally good. True: protein from steak and salmon is quite similar. But the protein package is vastly different (see chapter seven). Some high-protein foods deliver a lot of things that aren’t so healthful, like saturated fat, cholesterol, and salt. Others provide healthy fats and additional good-for-you nutrients like fiber, vitamins and minerals, and a host of beneficial phytochemicals.

     • Dairy foods are essential. Not true: you need calcium, not milk. Dairy foods are good sources of this mineral but also deliver plenty of calories and saturated fat. If you need extra calcium, there are cheaper, easier, and healthier ways to get it than dairy foods.

     • Silence on weight, exercise, alcohol, and vitamins. Like the Sphinx, the Food Guide Pyramid was silent on four things you need to know about: the importance of weight control, the necessity of daily exercise, the potential health benefits of a daily alcoholic drink, and what you can gain by taking a daily multivitamin.