OPINION: How to eat healthy under the new food pyramid 

It’s not easy separating the wheat from the chaff emerging from Washington these days — but with last month's release of radically new dietary guidelines, essentially flipping the 34-year-old food pyramid on its head — it must be attempted.

Our daily diet has to have certain goals beyond giving us enough calories to survive. It has to be crafted to support and strengthen our various bodily systems — musculoskeletal, digestive, circulatory, respiratory, neurologic, etc.

Diet also has to be part of our defense against disease — cancer, heart disease, diabetes, dangerous inflammatory conditions.

Yet we know that we’ve been causing, or actually inviting, the greatly increased incidence of these and other conditions through our highly caloric, largely inactive and often destructive lifestyles.

So when recommendations from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services completely upend what we’ve been taught for so long it’s natural to take them with a healthy grain of salt and skepticism.

To me, as a medical practitioner deeply concerned with my patients’ nutrition, the devil is apparent in the marquee nature of the new pyramid, even before we get to the details. I am struck by the incongruity of the big, fatty steak imaged next to a lean salmon steak; a wedge of cheese sharing the same prominence as a head of broccoli; butter and grapes seemingly paired with each other.

These foods are different, and while there are arguments to be made for including them where they are on the new pyramid, I fear it sends messages of false equivalence to the consumer.

Yes, DHHS warns prominently to avoid added sugars and highly processed foods such as deli meats, and limit refined carbohydrates like white flour, and tells us to eat a wide variety of fresh, whole, healthy foods. That’s good. But amid all the noise from Washington, this shocking new pyramid threatens confusion rather than clarity.

I advise patients simply:

• Fresh, fresh, fresh.

• Farm to table.

• Doing the bulk of our shopping in the produce aisle (or farmers market) and avoiding the freezer case.

• Choosing seasonal fruits and vegetables and avoiding highly processed foods (bagged, canned, boxed).

• Cooking dinner on the stove rather than in the microwave.

• If you eat beef, pork or chicken, make sure it’s organic, pasture raised and grass fed.

• Choosing meat and eggs without hormones and antibiotics added.

• Choosing fish that is wild caught rather than farm raised.

• Enjoying our meals not only for their flavor but the fact that we made them from ingredients that we bought and prepared ourselves, rather than the factory kitchen thousands of miles away.

Does it mean we can’t enjoy a hot dog at a picnic, or a slice of pepperoni pizza? Of course not, but we also realize that in our daily diet we shouldn’t eat these highly processed foods — or the fast foods available on every corner in today’s world.

For the bulk of human history there were no such things as processed foods, no preservatives, no “ready to eat” from a can or frozen package. The human body is built from natural elements that are amazingly formed into bones and muscles and organs and work together in harmony to give us rich, fulfilling lives.

So I advise reading the new guidelines — both headlines and details  — and comparing them with the old, with what you’ve been doing, and with the scientific and common sense advice of your health care professionals.

The lesson for us all? Eat well. Eat fresh. Eat a balanced diet. Don’t overdo it, and don’t worry needlessly. Give your body the right ingredients and it will reward you with good health and abundant energy.

Patrick Nuzzo, DN, is the author of "Anti-Inflammatory Medicine: Naprapathy & Nutrition for a Healthy, Regenerative Lifestyle" and the founder of the Southwest University of Naprapathic Medicine in Santa Fe.