We are misled

This is what we’re told:

 

This is what we’re served

There’s an obvious disconnect here.

As people, we seek guidance in our life decisions. We fundamentally want to trust someone to give us a framework with which to make choices, and we want to believe that that guidance is legitimate. We buy into the food pyramid. And we also want to put our trust into restaurants and think that they're using a degree of integrity in the food we're served.

But what happens when the nutritionists say one thing and then the companies that are in the business of feeding us do another? What happens when restaurants knowingly design entrees that have twice the calorie count for our entire day?

It necessitates that we use discretion. That we operate with a degree of skepticism with regard to things around us, and make decisions using critical analysis. We know that the food pyramid instructs us to eat more vegetables than meat, and yet we have adopted a culture of defining our food not by the veggies but by the meat that it features as the central focal point. (You would never order your meal at a restaurant by identifying it as “the spinach.” No, we identify it as “the salmon” or “the chicken.”)

This is not the only conflict like this in our society.
Good decisions require that we identify and challenge the contradictions in things we’re led to believe.