What foundations is the food pyramid built on?

You've probably heard of the food pyramid. It's a pictorial representation of what we've been told to base our diets on in recent years, and was produced to help us determine which foods we should eat more of, and which we should eat occasionally or avoid completely.

However, until recently the element at the base of the pyramid, meaning the food types we should aim to eat most of, was made up of the so-called "healthy whole grains".

Cereal grains are the seeds of various different types of grass plants and they are really high in energy. Things like wheat, corn, rice and oats are all cereal grains. What you may not realise though, is that they are not such a good source of nutrients...well, not for humans anyway. This may be the opposite to what you've been led to understand, but I promise you it's true.

So why would they be placed at the bottom with the intention that we would eat more of these than anything else? Well they're an economical crop to produce, can be stored for a long time before use and will fill the bellies of the masses. And as I said earlier, they contain a lot of calories to fuel a body.

Many people in the supply chain make a lot of money from them, and I'm talking about billions and billions of pounds, dollars or euros, so they have a vested interest in making sure we think we should be eating them every day and with every meal. That's why they've lobbied government agencies for years to push them on us.

Only in recent times have they been shifted up the pyramid one level and replaced by the more obvious choice of plant foods that we've been eating since the dawn of our species' evolution. In reality, they should rise much closer to the top along with dairy products (which is another food group that has been pushed upon us in the interests of making more profits for industry) and the animal sources of protein and fats should be in their place.

How can it be controversial to say that the foods our species has been eating for hundreds of thousands of years, that have driven our incredible evolution and domination, are not what we should still be eating today? And that instead of those foods, health can only come by eating grass seeds and the milk produced by a cow?

It just makes no sense. But it makes a lot of profit.