USDA

Aajonus stated directly that the food pyramid "was designed to keep the cereal companies in business and all the processed food companies in business" and that it "has nothing to do with what your needs are." He described the pyramid as something built around cooked and processed food and said that eating everything the pyramid prescribes "is not health." He characterized the guidelines as "absolute bunko" and told audiences plainly not to pay attention to them.

He extended this critique to the regulatory bodies that maintain and promote the guidelines. He stated that "the USDA isn't protecting us, the FDA's not protecting us. They're annihilating us." As evidence for this position he pointed to the FDA's progressive loosening of organic food labeling standards over time, noting that the threshold for what could still be called organic had moved from 2.5% allowable non-organic content to 5%, then to 7.5%, then to 12%, and finally to 15% at the time he was speaking. This trajectory, in his view, demonstrated that the regulatory apparatus was serving industry rather than consumers.

He also noted that the USDA's testing claims could not be trusted. When discussing whether island beef had been properly tested for hormones and chemicals, he said: "I mean, the USDA is supposed to have done some kind of testing, but I don't know if we can trust them. They claim it's no hormones, no chemicals." This distrust was not isolated to one product category but extended to the entire institutional relationship between the USDA and the food supply.

The base of the food pyramid, grains and cereals, received the sharpest criticism. Aajonus described the emphasis on carbohydrates and grain-based foods as the central mechanism by which commercial interests maintained their position. He referred to food pyramids as trash and said they "are designed to keep the Queen and the King of England happy with all their cereals that they own all over the world. Gotta keep eating cereals. That's the main talk of the pyramid. Carbohydrate cereals. Absolute malarkey."

He connected the promotion of high-carbohydrate diets directly to observable health problems in his own clinical experience and in broader society. He observed that many people who came to him had spent years on high-carbohydrate diets, which had left them unable to produce adequate hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes for meat digestion. He described the cultural saturation of the grain-and-cereal message by noting that every athlete appeared on cereal boxes and grain packaging, reinforcing the idea that carbohydrates were the proper fuel for human performance.

He contrasted this with what he described as the older American dietary tradition, before the high-carbohydrate era took hold, saying: "If you go back to the old days in America it was eggs and meat, eggs and meat, eggs and meat and milk. That was the diet, eggs and meat and milk, and boy it grew a healthy strong country." He presented this as the baseline that the food pyramid had displaced.

Aajonus offered a metabolic explanation for why the pyramid's carbohydrate emphasis was physiologically wrong. Drawing on research by several doctors who studied energy production, he described the citric acid cycle as showing that 80% of cellular energy is produced from fat, 15% from pyruvate (which is made from protein sugar derived from protein), and only 5% from citric acid or carbohydrates from fruit. He used this breakdown to argue that carbohydrates should constitute only 5% of the human diet, not the large percentage implied by the grain-heavy base of the food pyramid.

He stated: "Only 5% were necessary. 5%. So that's why I don't eat one fruit a day." He acknowledged that some toxic or overweight individuals might require up to 10% carbohydrate, but specified that this should be consumed in only one meal and that it should be eaten in the afternoon. Beyond that exception, he held the 5% figure as physiologically correct for a healthy person.

He noted that the Maasai tribe did not use any carbohydrates at all, living on blood, meat, and milk, and yet were described as the tallest, strongest, and healthiest tribe in the world. If the food pyramid's carbohydrate requirement were physiologically necessary, tribes like the Maasai could not exist in health. He also noted that meat itself contains carbohydrates, with the percentage varying by animal, so that someone eating a meat-based diet was receiving carbohydrates passively without needing to consume grain.

The most repeated and pointed argument Aajonus made against the food pyramid was his catalogue of indigenous peoples living in excellent health and extreme longevity on diets consisting of two, three, or at most four or five foods. He presented each of these populations as a direct empirical refutation of the pyramid's requirement for dietary variety across multiple food groups.

The Philippine tribe he met personally ate raw fish and raw coconut meat every day, with fruit two to three times a week. He visited this tribe, which required three days of travel by swimming, boating, and four-wheel driving to reach. He described the people as thicker and taller than most Asians, with perfect teeth except for one woman who had lost a tooth in an apparent accident. The women in their late sixties looked to him like women in their late twenties or early thirties. The average lifespan he cited was 137, with some individuals reaching 150. He described this repeatedly across different workshops as shooting "the hell out of the USDA's food pyramid."

The Maasai tribe in Africa lived on raw milk and raw meat, predominantly 65% dairy and 35% raw meat, and were described as the tallest and strongest people in the world. They ate no carbohydrates separately and needed none. An eleven-year drought nearly wiped them out, not dietary inadequacy.

The Samburu ate two foods, sometimes adding a small amount of grated root vegetable juice as a third. The Fulani ate approximately four or five foods, though they cooked their meat and ate only 10% meat with 90% raw dairy, using a little fruit or root vegetable to balance the cooked meat. The Eskimo ate raw meat and raw fat, with 80% of caloric intake from fat, and were described as free from the diseases common in industrialized populations.

He also referenced a man named Ramjeet who lived mainly on three foods: raw milk, raw butter, and raw almonds, maintaining abilities throughout his life that few people achieve. Aajonus tried this diet himself for over a year and found it kept him vital and young-feeling but did not provide him with the same energy as Ramjeet, which he attributed to the difference between being raised in a toxic industrial world versus being raised as Ramjeet was. He used this example explicitly to question what the food-industry-owned USDA's food pyramid was actually communicating.

Aajonus presented his own dietary framework as the correct alternative to the pyramid. His optimal diet, derived from 35 years of experimentation and work with over 3,200 people, consisted of raw animal products as the primary foods: 1 to 3 pounds of raw meat daily representing 25 to 30% of the diet, 8 to 24 ounces of raw fat daily representing 25% of the diet, 2 to 6 cups of raw green vegetable juices representing 25 to 30% of the diet, 8 to 12 ounces of raw milk representing 10 to 20% of the diet, and only 4 to 6 ounces of raw fruit at midday with equal amounts of raw fat, with fruit never exceeding 5% of total food consumption.

This structure inverts the food pyramid at nearly every level. The pyramid places grains and cereals at the base as the largest food group; Aajonus excluded grains entirely. The pyramid treats fat with suspicion and recommends it be consumed sparingly; Aajonus placed fat at 25% of the diet and argued 80% of cellular energy should come from fat. The pyramid presents fruits and vegetables as essential daily foundations; Aajonus limited fruit to 4 to 6 ounces midday with accompanying fat and treated excessive fruit consumption as damaging to the nervous system, bones, and blood sugar regulation.

He also pointed out that vegetarians and vegans, who align more closely with plant-heavy pyramid recommendations, develop progressively worse digestion over time because of insufficient protein for enzyme development, eventually requiring mono meals because they can no longer digest combinations of foods. This progressive digestive deterioration was, in his framing, one of the long-term consequences of following dietary guidance built around plant foods and grains rather than raw animal products.

Aajonus connected the food pyramid's institutional framework to the corruption of the organic food label as a further example of regulatory capture by industry. He described the FDA's serial relaxation of the organic standard as evidence that the same institutional forces shaping the food pyramid were simultaneously undermining the meaning of the organic designation. His position was that consumers could not rely on labels or government certifications to make sound dietary choices because the standards governing those labels were being continuously weakened to accommodate commercial interests.

He described an instance in which a buffalo producer was feeding animals 15% bakery waste, including stale donuts, and was permitted by the FDA to continue claiming natural or organic status because the bakery waste was grain-derived. Aajonus objected not only to the specific practice but to the institutional permissiveness that allowed it, which he saw as continuous with the broader pattern of the USDA and FDA serving industry rather than protecting health.

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