6. Questions & Answers

A simple question. If the Basic Four food group diet is as bad as you say, then just why is it so popular? It seems like that even with big business interests and government propaganda that people would discover the truth about nutrition.

That's a very interesting point. After all, we would like to think that the common man has the necessary intelligence and discrimination to know when he is being lied to.
It is a mistake to think that our country's dietary ills can be blamed entirely on the Basic Four Food Group diet plan. Actually, very few people follow any sort of diet plan—good or bad!
You'll notice that the Basic Four diet is very, very similar to what the average person eats anyway—a lot of meat and protein, dairy products, refined flours and breads, and so on. Actually, if you just added a fifth group called Salt, Fats, and Junk Foods then you would have the twentieth-century United States diet pinpointed.
That is why the Basic Four diet approach to nutrition has held sway. There was already a strongly established base of support. People eat like that anyway, and so they think the government and the food industries are giving them good advice.
Everybody's the same: We all like to be told that what we are already doing is right and correct, even if it will eventually kill us in our relative youth.

You talk about the Basic Four diet plan as if everybody in the country knew about it. I'm sixty-three years old, and this is the first time I've ever had this concept explained to me. Aren't you exaggerating about how widespread this notion is?

At the age of sixty-three, you may never have been exposed to this nutritional scheme, but ask your children and grandchildren. They will have heard about the Basic Four Food Groups because it is used as indoctrination for elementary school children. This is the standard, proscribed approach to teaching health and nutrition to school children.

What can we do then? Can we get our schools to teach another approach to nutrition?

Perhaps we are depending too much on public schools. It would probably be far better to leave nutrition teaching out of the curriculum entirely since the traditional and conservative approach to this subject that is always taken by schools simply perpetuates misinformation and institutionalizes error.
Don't forget that schools teach children what parents want them to know! What do you think the reaction would be if a teacher told a classroom of eight-year-olds that milk was not only unnecessary for health and growth, but actually harmful? The parents would have the teacher's scalp if their children were taught any nutritional information that conflicted with the family's normal eating practices.
That's why the Basic Four diet will be taught in our public school system for some time to come: It simply reflects the traditional diet eaten in this country. It doesn't "rock the boat" and it is a nonthreatening approach to nutrition.
Never mind that it is a completely wrong approach or that it perpetuates ignorance which will undermine the health of every person who follows its advice. It's what we're used to, and heaven help the person or teacher who is courageous enough to expose its fallacies, dangers, and lies.
As a parent, you can only work mightily to overcome the nutritional propaganda and nonsense thrown out in the name of education. Please teach your children and grandchildren the sensible alternatives to the Basic Four diet plan.