Search results: dietary guidelines

The government must have announced the members of the committee that will develop the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, because the American Society of Nutrition (I am a member) has issued a press release congratulating the nine (of 13) appointees who are ASN members.  Who are the other four?  We will find out next week when the committee starts meeting.  Stephen Clapp interviewed me about the Guidelines for Food Chemical News (October 27).  Here’s my part of his article, subtitled, “Keep it simple, stupid!” 

“Not everyone is happy with the 2005 guidelines. Marion Nestle, a high-profile nutritionist who teaches at New York University, favors scrapping the current advice in favor of something much simpler. She served on the 1995 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, an experience she described in her book Food Politics. She hasn’t been invited back.

“I would hope for an enormous reversal of the last set of guidelines,” she told FCN. “They’re unteachable and incomprehensible. Buried in the 41 recommendations is the basic advice: eat less, move more, eat more fruits and vegetables and whole grains, and don’t eat too much junk food.

“The idea that this document is for policymakers is ridiculous,” she continued. “You could boil it down to a single recommendation: ‘Drink fewer sodas and juice drinks.'”

Nestle said in 1995 the advisory committee was told to interpret nutrition science for the public. In 2005 the panel was told to make “science-based” recommendations, she said, which she interprets as code for “We won’t let you say anything unless the science is incontrovertible.”

Basing the guidelines on Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) is a “huge mistake,” Nestle says, because the DRIs are “incomprehensible” and set too high for calcium and potassium, resulting in a recommendation to eat two or three servings of dairy products daily. “If the Dietary Guidelines have to be based on the DRIs, it’s too much food,” she says.

Nestle says nutrition science is unusually subject to interpretation and bias because it’s difficult to link specific nutrients to chronic diseases. “My biases are open,” she says. “Everyone else has biases, too, but they may not want to disclose them. The public is deeply confused — you should just give the best advice you can. Just take into consideration all the research available and don’t worry about the impact on one industry or another.”

Now wouldn’t it be useful if they took my advice?  I will be following this story with great interest.

Update 10/28: Here’s the USDA’s announcement of the full list of committee members.

The USDA and Department of Health and Human Services are requesting nominations for the committee that will prepare the version of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans to be published in 2010. NutraIngredients.com points out that the committee’s first task is to decide whether the current guidelines need revision. That, of course, is a joke. What’s the point of appointing a committee if it doesn’t do anything. And in this case, the Dietary Guidelines badly need revision. What started out as a simple pamphlet with advice about healthy eating is now a 70-page textbook. The new committee will have some serious pruning to do. How to nominate someone to the committee? Both links explain.

I wouldn’t even ask such a silly question if the American Journal of Preventive Medicine wasn’t going to publish a paper arguing just this point. Along with one of the editors of that journal, I wrote an editorial commenting on the paper, to which its authors added a rebuttal to our editorial. The authors argue that the government has no business issuing advice based on weak evidence. I would agree except that evidence will never be as good as we wish it would be because research on human nutrition is really, really hard to do. And when it comes to diet, dietary guidelines are not exactly radical; the basic advice hasn’t changed in 50 years. I summarize it like this: “eat less, move more, eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, and don’t eat too much junk food.” Michael Pollan gets it down to 7 words: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” The Dietary Guidelines published in 2005 may take 70 pages, but in general, they say pretty much the same thing.

I always thought fiber had a simple definition: complex carbohydrates in food plants impervious to enzymes in our digestive tract.

OK, bacterial enzymes complicate the definition a bit.   But the real complication comes from what food companies toss into products to increase their apparent fiber content on food labels.

Now the FDA has issued guidance to industry about what companies can use to boost their products’ fiber content.  In FDA-speak:

We intend to exercise enforcement discretion for the declaration of dietary fiber, pending completion of a rulemaking regarding revising our regulations, if the declaration includes one or more of the following eight isolated or synthetic non-digestible carbohydrates, when present in a food and included in the amount of dietary fiber declared on the Nutrition or Supplement Facts label:

• mixed plant cell wall fibers
• arabinoxylan
• alginate
• inulin and inulin-type fructans
• high amylose starch (resistant starch)
• galactooligosaccharide
• polydextrose
• resistant maltodextrin/dextrin

What this means is that food manufacturers can use these to count as fiber.

Here, for example, is a happy announcement from Sensus, a company that manufactures “Frutafit” and “Frutalose” chicory root fibers.  It

welcomes the announcement that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recognizes inulin-type fructans derived from chicory root as dietary fiber for the new nutrition facts label. The recognition consolidates the fiber status of chicory root fiber in the US and supports further opportunities for healthy food applications in the US.

The Sensus announcement explains that this decision came about as a result of a “joint citizen petition,” one in which you can bet this company was involved.

This decision is about marketing.

If you want fiber in your diet, the best sources are still foods: fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains, nuts.

Yesterday’s Hagstrom Report quotes USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack’s comments to the Commodity Classic on the Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee:

The “folks who put those reports together … have freedom. They are like my 3-year-old granddaughter. She does not have to color inside the lines.”

His 5-year-old grandson, he said, “is learning about coloring within the lines.”

“I am going to color inside the lines,” Vilsack said.

Sounds like the USDA has no intention of doing what the DGAC recommends.

This is why it’s so important to file comments @ www.DietaryGuidelines.gov by April 8.  You can also register there for the public meeting in Bethesda, Maryland, on March 24.

Addition, March 10: Secretary Vilsack’s speech and press conference remarks are here.

 

I would be remiss not to comment on congressional passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill” which takes money from the poor and gives it to the rich (see Paul Krugman’s Attack of the Sadistic Zombies).

For what all this has to do with food, take a look at Kevin Klatt’s “6 Months of MAHA: A Reflection and Call to Action.”

My summary of his summary of what MAHA and MAGA have done so far:

• Cut $1 billion from USDA for local food purchases for school lunch and food bank
• Proposed a 40% cut to the NIH budget (which pays for nutrition research)
• Made huge cuts to SNAP.
• Cut WIC fruit and vegetable benefits.
• Allowed obesity researcher Kevin Hall to resign
• Cut landmark nutrition trials such as the Diabetes Prevention Program.
• Defunded major nutrition departments, like Harvard’s.
• Cut several molecular & community nutrition grants at Cornell.
• Eliminated USAID, a major funder of global nutrition research and intervention.
• Disrupted lead exposure programs.
• Cut FDA and CDC, including the human foods program HFP and food safety lab funding and staff (some reinstated).

Klatt’s point:

At 6 months in, I think it’s time for food and nutrition advocates, scientists and professionals to call out the MAHA agenda for what it is – it’s a movement with the right vibes, the wrong priorities and solutions, headed up by someone with dangerous thoughts on public health who is not going to improve the health of Americans, nutritional or otherwise.

By wrong priorities, I’m thinking color additives (yes, let’s get rid of them, but other things matter more) and seed oils (really, they are healthier than animal fats, especially in large amounts).

There are still real questions about what MAHA will actually do.  I’m waiting for the dietary guidelines and second MAHA report.  Those should reveal the real agenda.

Politico reports: White House invites 46 farm, food groups to discuss MAHA report

The MAHA report, as I’ve written, could have enormous implications for food system businesses.  The problems it describes with the health of America’s children call for policies that could reduce profits for companies that, for example, produce seed oils, food products with color additives, and ultra-processed foods in general.

The secretaries of HHS and USDA have promised to soon issue dietary guidelines to reduce intake of such foods.

Food companies making products targeted by such views are unlikely to be happy with the report.  If past history is any indication, they will lobby for exceptions, exemptions, and delays, and will insist that the proposed measures have no scientific basis (which some indeed do not), violate the First Amendment, and will cost jobs—the playbook that worked for such a long time for the tobacco industry.

The Politico report is behind a paywall, but Helena Bottemiller Evich obtained a list of who has been invited and writes the details in FoodFix: White House holds flurry of industry meetings in wake of MAHA drama. 

Her list shows separate meetings for fruit and vegetable producers and trade groups, and those for meat and dairy, restaurants, grocers, beverage companies (Big Soda), commodity groups, and Big Ag.

Oh to be a fly on those walls.

It’s hard for me to believe that this administration will do anything to reduce business interests, and early indications are that RFK Jr is merely calling for companies to take voluntary actions, and individuals to take personal responsibility—neither of which is likely to have any chance of Making America Healthy Again.

I look forward to seeing what they do with the dietary guidelines and the next MAHA Commission report on policy—both expected by the end of the summer, apparently.  Stay tuned.

 

The MAHA Commission released its report last week: The MAHA Report: Make Our Children Healthy Again.  Assessment.

This is one impressive report, forcefully written and tightly documented (it cites my work, among that of many others).

Overall, it paints a devastating portrait of how our society has failed our children.

It begins by stating that “The health of American children is in crisis” due to:

• Poor diet
• Aggregation of environmental chemicals
• Lack of physical activity and chronic stress
• Overmedicalization

The result: high rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, neurodevelopmental disorders, cancer, allergies  and mental health problems among kids.

Here are some selected items I particularly appreciated in the report.  The bullet points are direct quotes.

On poor diet

• Most American children’s diets are dominated by ultra – processed foods (UPFs ) high in added sugars , chemical additives , and saturated fats, while lacking sufficient intakes of fruits and vegetables.
• Pesticides , microplastics , and dioxins are commonly found in the blood and urine of American children and pregnant women— some at alarming levels.
• Children are exposed to numerous chemicals , such as heavy metals , PFAS , pesticides , and phthalates, via their diet, textiles, indoor air pollutants, and consumer products.
• To get into schools , many food companies have reformulated their products with minor ingredient adjustments to qualify for the federal Smart Snack program by meeting the school nutrition standards, which children can purchase separate from school meals.

The driving factors for poor diets

• Consolidation of the food system
• Distorted nutrition research and marketing
• Compromised dietary guidelines

On the dietary guidelines  

They maintain problematic reductionist recommendations, such as:

• Advising people to “reduce saturated fat” or “limit sodium” instead of focusing on minimizing ultra-processed foods.
• Treating all calories similarly, rather than distinguishing between nutrient-dense foods and ultra-processed products.
• Remain largely agnostic to how foods are produced or processed: There is little distinction between industrially processed foods and home-cooked or whole foods if their nutrient profiles look similar.
• Added sugars, saturated fats and sodium are treated as proxies for ultra-processed foods. For instance, a cup of whole-grain ready to eat fortified breakfast cereal and a cup of oatmeal with fruit might both count as “whole grain servings,” and the guidelines do not weigh in on differences in processing.

They also,

• Do not explicitly address UPFs.
• Have a history of being unduly influenced by corporate interests .

On food systems

• The greatest step the United States can take to reverse childhood chronic disease is to put whole foods produced by American farmers and ranchers at the center of healthcare.
• Traditional Field Crops vs. Specialty Crops : Historically, federal crop insurance programs have primarily covered traditional field crops like wheat , corn , and soybeans, while providing much less support for specialty crops such as fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, and nursery plants.

On Corporate Capture 

• Although the U.S. health system has produced remarkable breakthroughs, we must face the troubling reality that the threats to American childhood have been exacerbated by perverse incentives that have captured the regulatory bodies and federal agencies tasked with overseeing them .
• Limited comparisons between industry-funded research versus non- industry studies have raised concerns over potential biases in industry-funded research…Additionally, some industry leaders have engaged in promoting ghostwriting and sponsored reviews to influence the scientific literature.
• Notably, this ghostwriting strategy mirrors tactics used by the tobacco industry to distort scientific consensus is largely propelled by “corporate capture,” in which industry interests dominate and distort scientific literature, legislative actions, academic institutions, regulatory agencies, medical journals, physician organizations, clinical guidelines, and the news media.
• The pharmaceutical industry, with its vast resources and influence, is a primary driver of this capture, though similar dynamics pervade the food and chemical industries.

Research recommendations

• GRAS Oversight Reform: Fund independent studies evaluating the health impact of self-affirmed GRAS food ingredients, prioritizing risks to children and informing transparent FDA rulemaking.
• Nutrition Trials: NIH should fund long-term trials comparing whole-food, reduced-carb, and low-UPF diets in children to assess effects on obesity and insulin resistance.
• Large-scale Lifestyle Interventions: Launch a coordinated national lifestyle-medicine initiative that embeds real-world randomized trials-covering integrated interventions in movement, diet, light exposure, and sleep timing-within existing cohorts and EHR networks.

Comment

The report has been criticized for not getting some of the science right.  The agriculture industry is particularly concerned about the attack on the chemicals it uses.  It is said to be outraged by the report.  The report did throw Big Ag this bone: “Today, American farmers feed the world, American companies lead the world, and American energy powers the world.”

But the report raises one Big Question:  What policies will this administration come up with to deal with these problems?  These, presumably, will be in the next report, due in about 80 days.

This is an extraordinary report, a breath of fresh air in many ways, and I would love to know who wrote it.

But to fix the problems it raises will require taking on not only Big Ag, but also Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Chemical, and other industries affected by these and its other recommendations (the report also says a lot about drugs and mental health).  Big Ag has already weighed in.  Others are sure to follow.

Oh.  And it’s hard to know how policies can be implemented, given the destructive cuts to FDA, CDC, and NIH personnel and budget.

I will be watching this one.  Stay tuned.

Resources

• The press release: MAHA Commission Unveils Landmark Report Exposing Root Causes of Childhood Chronic Disease Crisis
• The Executive Order establishing the MAHA Commission
• The Commission report: Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment

Additional resource

• Errol Schweizer sent me his analysis on Medium, well worth reading.