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Superpyramid Program
An introduction to a new plan for eating, based on the proven benefits of diets found in the Mediterranean, the Orient, the Middle East, and Mexico, includes 150 recipes and a discussion of how certain foods benefit the body. 30,000 first printing. $30,000 ad/promo.
Hardcover
First published March 23, 1993
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August 22, 2023I got this book because I have an interest in the work of Monica Spiller in baking and Deborah Madison contributed some recipes to it.
The front half of the book does not pay off the promise of the title. The "superpyramid" is not revolutionary, it's iterative on the USDA's sufficiently strange pyramid design.
Spiller's "superpyramid" is bizarre enough in its own ways. It reemphasizes the importance of whole grains as the base of the pyramid and includes in the base layer, bizarrely, non-fat milk products and egg whites.
This decision was blowing my mind and distracting me at all points in the book. Spiller's overarching attitude seems to be that traditional diets are healthier than modern ones, so emulating them is the thing to do to avoid the traps of modern eating.
But traditional cultures would not have thrown away cream or egg yolks so that they could eat freely of de-fatted protein sources.
Furthermore it convolutes the logic of the pyramid. Spiller starts out with the premise that the base of the pyramid is the energy-giving foods, being that energy and specifically carbohydrates are the greatest intake requirement for human health. In short, you need to eat more energy than anything else, so it deserves the biggest part of the pyramid.
But putting egg whites and non-fat milk products makes no sense if that's the framing, as these are low-energy foods that are high in protein. When it's time to talk about them, the logic of the pyramid is that foods at the base layer "can be eaten freely," as if it's not possible to overconsume non-fat milk.
The third thing that distracted me about this arrangement was that many ancient diets would not have had access to dairy products at all, so the extreme level of importance that he puts beside dairy products for calcium and protein is strange. This book in particular emphasizes the Mediterranean way of eating, but I think putting (non-fat) dairy in a premier spot in the pyramid base because dairy animals have been part of Mediterranean culture for a long time fouls up the pyramid.
Dairy can be found at 3 levels of the pyramid, depending on its concentration of fat. The pyramid itself is mostly about reducing fat and reducing saturated fat in particular. This was a very popular view at the time the book was published, but I think recent reinterpretations have been right to de-emphasize the role of fat in diet. Fat is a pretty self-regulating macronutrient--you eat too much of it and you quickly go from feeling sated to feeling ill. And it's pretty important for carrying and expressing flavor compounds. Spiller even admits the general culinary inferiority of skim milk products to whole milk ones. Hey, if you're going to indulge in milk, you might as well drink the good stuff and not kid yourself.
Fat in diet is mostly a proxy measure for meat consumption. But modern approaches to butchering and dairy processing have made it possible to calibrate one's fat intake so that it's less representative of overall meat intake than it was in the past. Despite that, obesity and diseases of nutritional excess continue unabated. Some have observed or seem to have observed that this is because people who think they're eating low-fat diets are still eating far in excess of the low-fat recommendations. But whether it's a No True Scotsman issue where anyone whose low-fat diet fails is accused of not being a true low-fat dieter, or simply a matter of a diet recommendation that no one can abide, it obviously hasn't helped to tell people to eat by their macros and count the grams of fat. Hindsight is 20/20 for everyone, but considering that this book extolls the virtues of "whole, unprocessed" foods, it feels like a volte-face to include fractionated products one of the fundamental foods of the pyramid.
If you're a Deborah Madison completist, she does contribute recipes here. I recognize many of them from other works of hers that I own and she totally wimps out on the falafel recipe. I'll keep this book as an artifact, but it's not worth seeking it out on its own for the nutritional program it advocates. It's really not very different from the USDA pyramid.
The front half of the book does not pay off the promise of the title. The "superpyramid" is not revolutionary, it's iterative on the USDA's sufficiently strange pyramid design.
Spiller's "superpyramid" is bizarre enough in its own ways. It reemphasizes the importance of whole grains as the base of the pyramid and includes in the base layer, bizarrely, non-fat milk products and egg whites.
This decision was blowing my mind and distracting me at all points in the book. Spiller's overarching attitude seems to be that traditional diets are healthier than modern ones, so emulating them is the thing to do to avoid the traps of modern eating.
But traditional cultures would not have thrown away cream or egg yolks so that they could eat freely of de-fatted protein sources.
Furthermore it convolutes the logic of the pyramid. Spiller starts out with the premise that the base of the pyramid is the energy-giving foods, being that energy and specifically carbohydrates are the greatest intake requirement for human health. In short, you need to eat more energy than anything else, so it deserves the biggest part of the pyramid.
But putting egg whites and non-fat milk products makes no sense if that's the framing, as these are low-energy foods that are high in protein. When it's time to talk about them, the logic of the pyramid is that foods at the base layer "can be eaten freely," as if it's not possible to overconsume non-fat milk.
The third thing that distracted me about this arrangement was that many ancient diets would not have had access to dairy products at all, so the extreme level of importance that he puts beside dairy products for calcium and protein is strange. This book in particular emphasizes the Mediterranean way of eating, but I think putting (non-fat) dairy in a premier spot in the pyramid base because dairy animals have been part of Mediterranean culture for a long time fouls up the pyramid.
Dairy can be found at 3 levels of the pyramid, depending on its concentration of fat. The pyramid itself is mostly about reducing fat and reducing saturated fat in particular. This was a very popular view at the time the book was published, but I think recent reinterpretations have been right to de-emphasize the role of fat in diet. Fat is a pretty self-regulating macronutrient--you eat too much of it and you quickly go from feeling sated to feeling ill. And it's pretty important for carrying and expressing flavor compounds. Spiller even admits the general culinary inferiority of skim milk products to whole milk ones. Hey, if you're going to indulge in milk, you might as well drink the good stuff and not kid yourself.
Fat in diet is mostly a proxy measure for meat consumption. But modern approaches to butchering and dairy processing have made it possible to calibrate one's fat intake so that it's less representative of overall meat intake than it was in the past. Despite that, obesity and diseases of nutritional excess continue unabated. Some have observed or seem to have observed that this is because people who think they're eating low-fat diets are still eating far in excess of the low-fat recommendations. But whether it's a No True Scotsman issue where anyone whose low-fat diet fails is accused of not being a true low-fat dieter, or simply a matter of a diet recommendation that no one can abide, it obviously hasn't helped to tell people to eat by their macros and count the grams of fat. Hindsight is 20/20 for everyone, but considering that this book extolls the virtues of "whole, unprocessed" foods, it feels like a volte-face to include fractionated products one of the fundamental foods of the pyramid.
If you're a Deborah Madison completist, she does contribute recipes here. I recognize many of them from other works of hers that I own and she totally wimps out on the falafel recipe. I'll keep this book as an artifact, but it's not worth seeking it out on its own for the nutritional program it advocates. It's really not very different from the USDA pyramid.
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