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Comment by Ambolia | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't trust mainstream nutrition advice coming out from any country with a >20% obesity rate. So maybe from Japan, China, Thailand, Indonesia or Buthan. But not from the UK.

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Interestingly, Hong Kong residents appear to have a high meat-consumption rate. However they also walk far more than Westerners. Vegetable consumption may be higher as well.

Sadly, I wouldn't trust any mainstream nutrition advice at all. When you see the McDonalds and Coca Cola logos behind footballers, and find out that the food pyramid was made by the Department of Agriculture and unsurprisingly advocates for crops, you become really suspicious.

Papers in journals disclose conflicts of interest. You can't just hand-wave bodies of research including systematic reviews as untrustworthy on the conceit that some of it is cherry-picked in mainstream media.

Trying to paint USDA here as some sort of conspiracy to push processed grains on the population is really doing it a huge disservice and sounds like bad faith argument.

USDA is responsible for pretty much all food and farming oversight, including animal products and fresh vegetables. Just because one of their initiatives produced a misguided food pyramid poster isn't reason to denigrate the entire institution.

I'm sure you enjoy mad cow disease-free beef and salmonella free vegetables and chicken eggs when you go to the supermarket. You can thank USDA for that.

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