One of the most common questions I get asked is, “what should my macros be?”.

Or a variation of that, like “how much protein should I eat?”, or “can I eat carbs?”.

Today, I want to tell you why you can ignore macros completely. Yes. Completely. Why? Because it’s a form of nutritionism and is backed by political will instead of good-quality nutritional advice.

Nutritionism is a term to describe how we look at food today. Instead of talking about actual food, nutritionism is a belief that food is simply a sum of its abstract parts, like carbs, fat, protein, minerals, etc. Nutritionism seems modern and scientific…but it’s actually a bit sinister.

By talking about abstract parts of food that are impossible to see or measure at home, you have to look outside of yourself for nutrition advice. Before nutritionism, we ate whole food, prepared in ways that were taught to us by our ancestors.

Inside nutritionism, we need to look to health experts for advice, and sadly, many of our health “experts” end up being food manufacturers and advertisers telling us what to eat.

Let me tell you a story about the moment in time that changed the way food recommendations are made.

In the mid-1970s the U.S. Senate wanted to investigate the role food plays in chronic illnesses like heart disease and cancer. They put together a committee that was headed by Senator George McGovern and filled with many lawyers and journalists (scientists and doctors were surprisingly missing in this committee).

They spent a few days listening to testimony and in 1977 they released their first recommendations; “Eat less meat and dairy”.

It was specific, direct, and easy to follow. And sadly, this was the last time a government agency told us to eat less of any certain food.

Why? Politics. Specifically, Lobbyists.

Unsurprisingly, the beef and dairy lobby didn’t like these recommendations one bit. This mattered because they’re VERY powerful.

They flexed their political muscle and quickly that simple and direct recommendation was retracted and replaced with, “Eat more meat, poultry, and fish that’s low in saturated fat”.

No more “eat less”. No more specific food recommendations. Now we had to turn to our nutritional experts to find out where this evil saturated fat was lurking. Since most of us don’t have a nutritionist on speed-dial, food manufacturers were happy to jump in.

They refined and processed the heck out of oils, dairy, and other food to remove the saturated fat. Food labels everywhere were being redesigned so we all knew what foods had 0% saturated fat. The sugar lobby loved this as well! Out came the fat, in came lots of sugar to make the food more palatable.

We now know that saturated fat poses no risk for heart disease. None. Major cohort studies, following 100,000+ people, found no correlation.

But, the story isn’t over yet for Senator McGovern. The beef lobby wanted to make sure that Senator McGovern paid a big price for making the public question their beef consumption. The next time he was up for election the beef lobby gave tons of money to his competitor and they easily ousted this 3-term Senator.

The beef lobby sent a very clear message to all politicians – don’t mess with food lobbies. (Oprah also learned that hard lesson as well)

The good news is this – WE can ignore the food lobbies.

Together we have even more power when we choose where our money goes. Every time we buy whole food and ignore nutritionism is an act of rebellion against food lobbies and this type of political pull (and gives money to our amazing farmers).

I love this - eating whole food as an act of rebellion. Doesn’t that feel amazing! (my inner teenager loves rebelling).

Choose whole food, use your body as a guide, and rebel against politically motivated food advice.

Your body will thank you (and so will your local farmers <3)

Xo Lisa

P.S. If you love learning about food politics as much as I do, I dive deeper inside my new book Undieting: Freedom from the Bewildering World of Fad Diets.