The new diet recently featured in the Lancet is dubbed “The Planetary Health Diet.” Increase the health of ecosystems it may, but increase the health of humans it most certainly will not. How many years did it take for us to recover from the bad science, obfuscation, and data suppression of Ancel Keys? Unknown, because apparently we are still in that era fourteen years after his death.

I’m dubbing this new diet the AYKM Diet. Surely you don’t need to Google that!

The AYKM Diet reminds me of a series of terrible US food pyramids starting in 1992, mostly because it recommends that the largest portion, 32%, of our daily calories come from whole grains. Grains, whole or no, are not only low-nutrient compared to other whole foods, but also harmful.

Gluten (in wheat, rye, and barley) in particular has been linked to metabolic syndrome, inflammation, and insulin resistance. Even in 1992, the grain bias in the bad pyramid was reported to be a result of food industry lobbying rather than nutrition science. By encouraging us to eat grains and avoid fats, the Bad Pyramid was a key actor in accelerating our NCD epidemic, as everyone knows now…

Or maybe not.

The next largest calorie bucket is “unsaturated oils” at 14%. Not terrible, because monounsaturated oils from EVOO, avocados, and tree nuts are very good. Please eat those.* As far as the polyunsaturated oils, though, you need to separate out omega-3s, which are anti-inflammatory, and omega-6s, which are inflammatory. These useful substances arrive in whole foods in a ratio of 1:1, then heat and chemicals destroy Threes but not Sixes, so processed food is hugely inflammatory. To fight the unnatural imbalance of omegas in the Western diet,  you need to eat wild fatty fish, grass fed beef, and eggs more often than AYKM recommends, and to avoid every processed oil you’ve ever heard of other than EVOO, avocado, and coconut.

Grapeseed is the cyanide of processed oils. But please also avoid organic, expeller-pressed canola oil, and all the oils in-between except EVOO, avocado, and coconut.

Maybe that should be a T-shirt. Not a top-seller, I fear.

Finally, I would also mention that we need to be feeding our microbiomes, ie, eating vegetable fiber. The AYKM-recommended 5% fruits and 3% veggies seems low. I’d drop most of the dairy (6%) and added sugar (5%) and move all those calories to the veggie side.

Beans do not count as veggies for the MB. I’m not sure why AYKM loves legumes–probably because it is taking away all our healthy meat-based protein–but I can’t keep critiquing this diet all day.

If you consult your doctor about this, start by asking her if she has followed research in nutrition during the last thirty years. I get the impression many doctors have not.

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* The AYKM Diet actually recommends that 11.5% of your calories come from nuts. Please choose monounsaturated fat-containing tree nuts, raw or dry-roasted. Nuts roasted in processed oils are inflammatory!