Government Makes You Fat And Unhealthy
Nina Teicholz, author of "The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat & Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet" and recently heard on my radio show discussing her book, has an op-ed in the WSJ on how the low-fat diet Americans have been told to eat for decades is based in bad science -- and the USDA has been lax both in recognizing that and putting the word out:
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans--jointly published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) every five years--have had a profound influence on the foods Americans produce and consume. Since 1980, they have urged us to cut back on fat, especially the saturated kind found mainly in animal foods such as red meat, butter and cheese. Instead, Americans were told that 60% of their calories should come from carbohydrate-rich foods like pasta, bread, fruit and potatoes. And on the whole, we have dutifully complied.By the turn of the millennium, however, clinical trials funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were showing that a low-fat regime neither improved our health nor slimmed our waistlines. Consequently, in 2000 the Dietary Guidelines committee started to tiptoe away from the low-fat diet, and by 2010 its members had backed off any mention of limits on total fat.
Yet most Americans are still actively trying to avoid fat, according to a recent Gallup poll. They are not aware of the USDA's crucial about-face because the agency hasn't publicized the changes. Perhaps it did not want to be held responsible for the consequences of a quarter-century of misguided advice, especially since many experts now believe the increase in carbohydrates that authorities recommended has contributed to our obesity and diabetes epidemics.
Such a humbling reversal should have led the expert committee preparing the 2015 Dietary Guidelines, which holds its next-to-last public meeting Nov. 6-7, to fundamentally rethink the anti-fat dogma. But instead it has focused its anti-fat ire exclusively on saturated fats. Recent guidelines have steadily ratcheted down the allowable amount of these fats in the diet to 7% of calories "or less," which is the lowest level the government has ever advised--and one that has rarely, if ever, been documented in healthy human populations.
The most current and rigorous science on saturated fat is moving in the opposite direction from the USDA committee. A landmark meta-analysis of all the available evidence, conducted this year by scientists at Cambridge and Harvard, among others, and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, concluded that saturated fats could not, after all, be said to cause heart disease. While saturated fats moderately raise "bad" LDL-cholesterol, this does not apparently lead to adverse health outcomes such as heart attacks and death. Another meta-analysis, published in the respected American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2010, came to the same conclusion. The USDA committee has ignored these findings.
[Trans-]fat. Chocolate.
And also salt. In 2013 the CDC published that the average USA diet contained roughly the maximum recommended amount of salt. Scary. BUT the report also could find no adverse effects (for people without existing conditions such as high blood pressure) at intake levels triple the recommendation. 2014, one year later, the FDA announced an expanded war on salt with the aim of lowering salt content of foods...
John A at October 29, 2014 9:22 AM
Gary Taubes did an award-winning piece for the journal Science years ago on how the supposed adverse effects of salt (on the ordinary person) were not supported by science.
Amy Alkon at October 29, 2014 9:27 AM
There was also a report a year ago that the advice for people to avoid the sun is not only baseless in terms of cancer reduction, but those who got more sun and were out in the sun more often were measurably healthier and lived longer lives. This was a huge study that followed thousands of people for twenty years.
Michael Hiteshew at October 30, 2014 5:21 PM
Like in Sleeper, Woody Allen when he wakes up, still feels woozy, and the doctor prescribes for him cigarettes, whiskey, and red meat.
DonM at October 30, 2014 5:50 PM
About the sun:
As a pathologist, I see lots of ill effects of the sun on the skin. Melanoma, solar elastosis, basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas, to name just a few. Demodex folliculitis is almost universal on sun damaged skin.
My aged 69 year old body (I have blue eyes.) is covered by all sorts of blemishes: moles, keratoses, senile hemangiomas, gray, kinky hair on my head and face. My back is especially bad from my farm childhood.
None of these blemishes are found on my legs, where the skin is still in perfect condition, and the hair is still blond and silky.
So, get all the sun you want. The price is high in fair skinned people.
joel at October 30, 2014 6:11 PM
Under a committed Leftist like Obama, the USDA, HHS, NIH and CDC are exclusively political organizations. And the core values of the Left are: lying, deceit and hypocrisy.
FrancisChalk at October 31, 2014 3:06 AM
Now, Amy, if you have the meat necessary for a healthy diet, PETA will hit the roof and there certainly won't be grain to waste on ethanol. Face it people, the Left rules the bureaucracy, and until they are gone elections don't matter.
SDN at October 31, 2014 4:00 AM
Leave a comment