New Dietary Guidelines for Americans
The much anticipated new guidelines from the gubment is out. It’s as I expected, the general MAHA message is something I agree with, such as:
“The message is simple: eat real food. To Make America Healthy Again, we must return to the basics. American households must prioritize diets built on whole, nutrient-dense foods—protein, dairy, vegetables, fruits, healthy fats, and whole grains. Paired with a dramatic reduction in highly processed foods laden with refined carbohydrates, added sugars, excess sodium, unhealthy fats, and chemical additives, this approach can change the health trajectory for so many Americans”
So far, I can’t disagree with any of that! Per usual, they fall apart when it comes to some key details. For example:
“When cooking with or adding fats to meals,
prioritize oils with essential fatty acids, such
as olive oil. Other options can include butter
or beef tallow.”
One problem there, seed oils are high in EFA’s, olive oil is not, much less butter and tallow which are poor sources of EFA’s. A first year nutri student should know that, much less the office charge of food recs for the entire population. That’s a hard fail there. I suspect Mr Kennedy could not name the two EFA’s if asked, or he and his staff are not aware of what the E in EFA actually means? Anyway, it appears the document attempts to avoid the entire anti seed oil discussion in favor of recommending other sources of fat in the the diet. I did hear him say in an interview “we are ending the war on saturated fat.” Recommending more saturated fat in the American diet is a hard fail, one that is ignorant of the science, ignoring the data, and will be counter productive to the #1 killer in the US.
One odd statement for example is:
“More high-quality research is needed to determine which types of dietary fats best support long-term health.”
While there’s always more research to be done, which dietary fats and the sources that support long term health, reduce rates of CVD, improve insulin sensitivity, etc are well established. However, I’d be all for the NIH funding more studies to get more detailed and granular data on that topic. I made a vid not long ago as to why we lack the high quality data we need to answer many Qs we still have on nutrition. I will post that in the comments section below.
So as expected, this new guideline has some excellent advice, and some, well, not so excellent advice. With some tweaking, it could be a solid set of guidelines, but as is, not so much… No doubt, it will only give the pro and anti MAHA types more reasons to be happy/unhappy as even our food now part of the polarized aspects of US life given to tribalism over science and data. Those are my quick assessments, more details to come.