Marshmallow cereal is better than beef?
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Mark Sisson with Coffee Cup

Happy Sunday, everyone.

Tufts University just released a new health rating system for food using a proprietary algorithm. There's probably some "machine learning" in there.

How'd it turn out?

Terribly. It's insane.

Just look at this breakdown of some health ratings of popular foods.

http://bar chart from tufts research

 

Primal Omegas — a fish oil supplement derived from wild-caught Norwegian cod and rigorously third-party tested for heavy metals and other contaminants.


Going by the "Food Compass Score" devised by Tufts University, the healthiest diet would consist of watermelon, canned peaches, cereal, pineapple, nonfat chocolate frozen yogurt, and chocolate covered almonds with a side of sweet potato chips. If you really want to, you can sneak in a couple meals that include ground beef or cheddar cheese or eggs fried in butter, but those should really "be minimized." 

Imagine if your kids got wind of this. They'd print out that chart and parade it around every chance they got, demanding sugar cereal instead of hamburgers, fries instead of eggs. 

Only it's worse than that. Now the health experts have jumped on board. Government officials writing laws and putting together school meal plans will wave this kind of information around when making their decisions. 

Later, on Twitter, the architect and popularizer of the new rating system, Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, responded to some criticisms. According to the doctor, beef deserves its meager placing since it "has no real health benefits." At best, it's "neutral." That's why Lucky Charms is better than beef. 

Then you have doctors swooping in with comments like this:

dr. abril tweet about tufts food rating system

It sounds okay on the surface. She's not criticizing beef. "We need both!" But look deeper. Oh, beef is just "protein, water, and fat." Watermelon is water, fiber, and carbs. Both are far more than that. What about the creatine, the B-vitamins, the carnosine, the stearic acid, the monounsaturated fat, the conjugated linoleic acid, the zinc in the beef? What about the L-citrulline in the watermelon? The polyphenols?

These are not serious people. They either aren't equipped with or refuse to wield the knowledge we have about the food we eat (and don't) at our fingertips.

Don't worry about what they say or recommend. Trust your intuition. Trust your ability to parse data. Trust the basic common sense you wield that tells you beef and eggs are more nutritious than canned peaches and Cheerios.

Can't wait to hear your thoughts on this one. Leave a comment on this week's New and Noteworthy

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