In my 17-year nutrition career, I’ve had several experiences that I will label “unsettling.”

For example, I once had a client whose told me her friend had suffered a heart attack.

Apparently, the friend had been taking a multi-vitamin and her doctor actually scolded her for it, saying she doesn’t need “that crap” and her diet will give her “all the nutrients she needs.”

Sorry doc, but you’re all wet, and it’s painfully obvious you haven’t ventured beyond the one basic course in nutrition that you took in medical school.

What makes the fact that our doctors are clueless about nutrition even worse is that good, sound diet advice is getting harder and harder to come by…and much of it is actually disease-creating.

Here’s what I mean.

What’s a healthy diet?

This didn’t used to be a difficult question.

Prior to about 1915 a healthy diet used to mean meats, poultry, fish, fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, butter, dairy and eggs. 

Meals were prepared at home and were relatively simple—typically some type of meat with vegetables.

At that time, the average man’s BMI was about 21—meaning a slender-to-normal weight. 

So what changed?

Our food, that’s what.

Processed foods arrived on the scene in 1915 and since that time, our waistlines and disease rates have continued their upward climb.

But we reached what I consider the point of no return after the birth of our fast-food culture a few years later.

White Castle (the first drive-in restaurant) was founded in 1921. McDonald’s started operation in the late 1940s, Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1952, Burger King in 1954, Pizza Hut in 1958, and Taco Bell and Subway in 1962.

And we’ve continued to get sicker and fatter since then.

Muddy waters

The decline in nutritional quality and, well, safety of our food is bad enough, but there’s more.

Because our “nutrition experts” have been heavily influenced (aka bought off) by food companies and this is obvious in their dietary recommendations.

If you’ve been a reader of mine for a while, you know what I think of the USDA’s “My Plate”—in a nutshell, it’s a fast track to diabetes, cancer and heart disease with its high concentration on grains and vegetable oils.

But the latest and greatest so-called advice—The Food Compass—takes it to the next level!

The Food Compass, first introduced in 2021 by the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, is basically an advertisement in disguise for processed foods. 

It is billed as “a science-based tool to rank the healthfulness of foods.” Foods that score between 70 – 100 are “encouraged,” those scoring 31 - 69 should be “eaten moderately,” and those between 1 - 30 should be “minimized.”

But when you dig deeper, it becomes obvious that its primary purpose is to lead people away from wholesome real foods toward processed garbage. 

This should be no surprise. The lead author of The Food Compass, Dariush Mozaffarian, Dean Emeritus of the Friedman School, has close ties to the Rockefeller Foundation (the institution that highjacked modern medicine in favor of pharmaceuticals) and the World Economic Forum/WEF (that includes reengineering of the global food system as one of its objectives), while Tufts receives funding from several junk food companies. 

What does that mean? Well, here are some examples—The Food Compass ranks:

• Lucky Charms as nutritionally superior over whole eggs
• Ice cream with nuts as healthier than ground beef 
• Honey Nut Cheerios as better for you than eggs fried in butter
• Potato chips, corn chips and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups higher than eggs, cheese and ground beef

It ain’t nothing new

This practice of corporations heavily influencing nutrition advice has been going on for quite some time.

It started around 1941 when General Foods, Quaker Oats, Heinz, the Corn Products Refining Corporation (aka “Big Corn”) and others founded the “Nutrition Foundation” to fund nutrition research at universities.

And if you think for a moment that this “research” was completely objective and unbiased, then there’s a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.

Fast forward to now—it’s completely normal and accepted practice to have food (and pharmaceutical) corporations influencing research studies, professional organizations, and educational conferences, among other things.

For example, a 2020 study uncovered major conflicts of interest among members of the US 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC). 

In fact, of the 20 experts on the committee, 95 percent had a conflict of interest with food companies or pharma. Companies including Kellogg’s, Abbott, Kraft, Mead Johnson, General Mills and Dannon were linked to multiple DGAC members.

And as I’ve mentioned in my writings before, The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) has close ties to Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, General Mills and Kraft. 

A healthy diet is not difficult

If you want to have a healthy diet, it’s really not difficult.

Start by doing the vast majority of your grocery shopping around the outer perimeter of the store, where the REAL foods are located.

Fresh vegetables and fruits, meats, poultry and fish, eggs, real butter and full fat dairy—these are the foods that will help support your nutritional needs.

Limit the number of processed foods you do buy and strive for minimally or moderately processed items. For example:

Minimally processed foods include canned tomatoes and other vegetables, dried fruits, frozen vegetables and fruits (without sauces), jarred olives and artichokes, dried beans, prepared horseradish, rice and grains, dried spices and herbs, pickles, relish, vinegar, cold-pressed oils, raw nuts and ground coffee.

Moderately processed foods are things like dried pasta, bread (preferably whole grain), cheese, pesto, ketchup, mustard, sour cream, salad dressings, soups, peanut butter, jam, mayonnaise, tomato sauce or paste, roasted nuts and maple syrup.

Read labels carefully and avoid any food with high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, bioengineered ingredients, hydrogenated oils or in general a list of ingredients you can’t even pronounce.

A healthy diet probably isn’t enough

As much as I wish I could say otherwise, a healthy diet is typically not enough to support your body’s fight against disease and consistently provide all the nutrients you need.

That’s because many factors can severely impact your health and/or reduce the level of nutrients your body can derive from your foods.

These include:

• Toxins in the food, air, water supply, lawn and workplace 
• Stress 
• Soda or alcohol consumption
• Lack of water consumption
• Medications—especially acid reducers
• Reduced nutritional value of foods due to bioengineering of crops, genetic modifications and depletion of soil minerals 

A multi-vitamin can fill in the blanks

The takeaway here is that supplementing with a complete multi-vitamin and mineral formula is truly the only 100 percent reliable way to ensure your body consistently has what it needs!

And our very own Super Core multi-vitamin and mineral formula is your ticket to solid nutrition.

I hand selected all the nutrients in Super Core to provide an effective, health-supporting variety of essential vitamins and minerals. 

Plus Super Core’s effective blend goes way beyond most other multi formulas and also includes natural sources of antioxidants and anti-inflammatories!

Give your body what it needs—365 days a year!

Nutrition is the #1 key to a healthy, disease-free existence.

So start with a diet of wholesome real foods like I described above—that is step 1 and it’s not optional!

Then help compensate for any areas where you may be lacking with Super Core.

And pave the way for better health and feeling great into your golden years!

To your health,

Sherry Brescia