Search results: dietary guidelines

The 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee is meeting today by teleconference.

One issue, no doubt, will be the House directive in the appropriations bill (page 50 of this draft):

Dietary Guidelines.—The Committee is concerned that the advisory committee for the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans is considering issues outside of the nutritional focus of the panel. Specifically, the advisory committee is showing an interest in incorporating sustainability, climate change, and other environmental factors and production practices into their criteria for establishing the next dietary recommendations, which is clearly outside of the scope of the panel. The Committee directs the Secretary to ensure that the advisory committee focuses only on nutrient and dietary recommendations based upon sound nutrition science and not pursue an environmental agenda. Should environmental or production factors be included in the panel’s recommendations to USDA and
the Department of Health and Human Services, the Committee expects the Secretary to reject their inclusion in the final 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Amazing, how Congress thinks it knows more about nutrition thank nutrition scientists.

Let’s grant that Congress knows what the political fallout will be from these guidelines.

NPR interviewed Kate Clancy, who has been arguing for the need to include environmental considerations in dietary guidelines for years.

In 1986, nutritionist Kate Clancy, then teaching at Syracuse University, co-authored [with Joan Gussow] an article called “Dietary Guidelines for Sustainability.” It was addressed to her colleagues, Clancy says. She wanted them “to take a broader view of what they were advising people to do, with regard to their diet. It wasn’t just nutrients.” She urged them to consider not just what foods contribute to personal health, but also what types of food “contribute to the protection of our natural resources.”

Makes sense, no?

Too bad politics trumps science in this Congress.

Brazil has just released the final version of its Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian population in English as well as in Portuguese (I wrote about the draft version in an earlier post).

As explained in the press release (also in English), the guidelines include ten steps to healthy diets:

1. Make natural or minimally processed foods the basis of your diet
2. Use oils, fats, salt, and sugar in small amounts when seasoning and cooking natural or minimally processed foods and to create culinary preparations
3. Limit consumption of processed foods
4. Avoid consumption of ultra-processed products
5. Eat regularly and carefully in appropriate environments and, whenever possible, in company
6. Shop in places that offer a variety of natural or minimally processed foods
7. Develop, exercise and share culinary skills
8. Plan your time to make food and eating important in your life
9. Out of home, prefer places that serve freshly made meals
10. Be wary of food advertising and marketing

Traditionally, families based their diets on natural and minimally processed foods.  The guidelines are based on the actual, traditional dietary patterns of a substantial proportion of the Brazilian population of all ages and classes throughout the country.

Carlos Monteiro, the Brazilian nutrition professor listed as the technical formulator of the guidelines, was in Washington DC last week to speak at a conference on the 2015 Dietary Guidelines.   Monteiro’s speech is here.  Tweets sent during the meeting are here.

I hope everybody listened.

I received an e-mail from the communications director of the Independent Women’s Forum, a group whose mission is to “improve the lives of Americans by increasing the number of women who value free markets and personal liberty.”

Interesting.

The group and its friends have just sent a letter to USDA and HHS complaining that the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) is exceeding its mandate.

Among our most acute concerns is the “mission creep” of the Committee, which has expanded to include non-dietary factors such as “carbon footprints,” “climate change,” “urban agriculture,” and “green cleaning and pest control practices.”

This likely reflects the composition of the Committee, which is nearly all epidemiologists from elite academic institutions with no direct experience in the practical realities of how food is produced and what average Americans may choose to eat.

We need only consider the strongly negative reaction to recent changes to the school lunch rules to understand what is at risk if this Committee attempts to dictate over-reaching changes to the American diet.

This would be funny if it weren’t part of the Republican agenda to roll back improvements in nutrition advice and practice aimed at preventing obesity and its related chronic diseases.

What the IWF is saying is that its members know better about what’s good for health than all those elite epidemiologists, scientists, and other experts on the committee who are worried about what climate change will do to our food supply.

Let’s hope the agencies ignore this letter.

The food movement must be succeeding beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.

Now it’s the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee’s (DGAC’s) turn to come under attack.

The Guidelines:  These are principles of healthful diets aimed at policymakers  (not the general public).

The history:  They have been published every five years since 1980, so we are now in round #8 scheduled for publication in 2015.

The process: Two federal departments, USDA and Health and Human Services, appoint an advisory committee of nutrition scientists.  The committee reviews the science and prepares a report.  Since 2005, the agencies have written the guidelines, not the committee.     

Disclosure: I was a member of the advisory committee for the 1995 Guidelines.

The fireworks: According to ProPolitico Morning Agriculture (behind a pay wall, alas), the committee is attracting unusual attention from the right:

• The Washington Examiner, writes that “committee members…are hijacking the guidelines to advance a range of ideological agendas having nothing to do with healthy eating.”
• The Daily Caller asks “Are Progressives Inserting Their Agenda Into Your Diet?” Tuesday.
• The Washington Free Beacon wants you to “Meet the Radicals Creating the New Federal Dietary Guidelines.”

A clue to what is upsetting these folks comes from the committee’s request for public comments.  It is asking for comments that address:

• Elements of a whole food system
• Information on specific food groups or commodities
• Sustainability metrics that have been implemented or are in development

These, apparently, are fighting words.

Yesterday, Fox News asked why “ivory tower types” were in charge of determining food choices for Americans.

Its story particularly singled out Miriam Nelson, a professor at Tufts (not New York University—could Fox be confusing her with me?):

New York University professor Miriam Nelson, said at the committee’s last meeting, “We need to make sure that the guidelines and the policies are promoting those foods … [that] are sustainably grown and have the littlest impact on the environment.”

…The professors of the DGAC may think their job is save the planet by promoting sustainable agriculture and plant-based diets, but if they don’t understand the real-world implications of their work, they’ll be oblivious to the havoc they’ll wreak on the millions of Americans whose diets hinge on their guidelines.

By this time, the Dietary Guidelines are hardly of interest to anyone but policy wonks (really, they never change all that much).  Cheers to the current committee for injecting some life into them.

The 2015 Guidelines will be fun to watch.

Brazil has issued new dietary guidelines open for public comment.  For the Brazilian Dietary Guidelines document (in Portuguese), click here..

Brazilian health officials designed the guidelines to help protect against undernutrition, which is already declining sharply in Brazil, but also to prevent the health consequences of overweight and obesity, which are sharply increasing in that country.

The guidelines are remarkable in that they are based on foods that Brazilians of all social classes eat every day, and consider the social, cultural, economic and environmental implications of food choices.

The guide’s three “golden rules:”

• Make foods and freshly prepared dishes and meals the basis of your diet.
• Be sure oils, fats, sugar and salt are used in moderation in culinary preparations.
• Limit the intake of ready-to-consume products and avoid those that are ultra-processed.

The ten Brazilian guidelines:

1. Prepare meals from staple and fresh foods.
2. Use oils, fats, sugar and salt in moderation.
3. Limit consumption of ready-to-consume food and drink products
4. Eat regular meals, paying attention, and in appropriate environments.
5. Eat in company whenever possible.
6. Buy food at places that offer varieties of fresh foods. Avoid those that mainly sell products ready for consumption.
7. Develop, practice, share and enjoy your skills in food preparation and cooking.
8. Plan your time to give meals and eating proper time and space.
9. When you eat out, choose restaurants that serve freshly made dishes and meals. Avoid fast food chains.
10. Be critical of the commercial advertisement of food products.

Now if only our Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee would take note and do the same?

Would you like us to have sensible, unambiguous food-based guidelines like these?  You can file comments on the 2015 Dietary Guidelines here.

Thanks to Professor Carlos A. Monteiro of the Department of Nutrition, School of Public Health at the University of Sao Paulo for sending the guidelines and for their translation, and for his contribution to them.

I’m at a meeting in Washington DC of the American Society of Nutrition. At the exhibits, David Schnackenberg, who runs a website on the history of military nutrition, gave me these dietary guidelines from 1861. They are from a monograph by Dr. John Ordonaux, “Hints on the Preservation of Health in the Armies: for the Use of Volunteer Officers and Soldiers.”

• Soldiers should be fed a mixed diet of animal and vegetable substances.
• A variety of foods are needed to avoid monotony and increase assimilation.
• A healthy diet must conform to the physiological requirements of the season with less animal fats in the summer dietary, and more starch, vegetables, and fruits.
• Fresh fruits are always preferable to dry or preserved ones.
• Farinaceous vegetables are more nourishing than roots or grasses.
• The best soldiers in the world are fed on dark colored bread.
• French army dietaries provide nutritious soups made with meat or vegetables.
• The woody fibre of the vegetable provides bulk as well as nourishment.
• Each company should have at least one educated cook.
• Beans, unless thoroughly cooked, are only fit for horses. When half-cooked, they will provoke indigestion and diarrhea.
• Ardent spirits are not necessary for health and the soldier is better off without them.
• Soldiers must be well fed to bear the fatigues of marching, to encounter unaffected the changes of climate, and to develop a high muscular tone.

As I keep saying, basic nutrition advice has, in fact, not changed much over the years.  The big change in the last 150 years is the invention of junk foods. Dr. Ordonaux did not have snacks and sodas to contend with, nor today’s extensive obesity among army recruits.

The 2010 edition of the dietary guidelines appeared on January 31.  Since then, FoodNavigator-USA, an online daily newsletter for the food industry, says it has been gathering reactions and taking a look at how the guidelines are likely to affect food and beverage companies.   Here are its reports.

‘Eat less’: A difficult message for industry: The new dietary guidelines give the food industry the clearest map yet of what is necessary for a healthy diet – but no one is fooled by assertions that industry is already in line.

2010 Dietary Guidelines: Opportunity for continued industry innovation: In this guest article, Melissa Musiker of the Grocery Manufacturers Association says that the 2010 Dietary Guidelines are an opportunity for industry to find better ways to innovate, as part of a collective responsibility to improve American diets.

How the 2010 guidelines affect food technologists:  The 2010 Dietary Guidelines’ new focus on reducing energy intake will present major reformulation challenges for food technologists, says the Institute of Food Technologists’ (IFT) president-elect.

Politics too influential in new Dietary Guidelines, says nutrition expert [that would be me]:  The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans are still too heavily influenced by political interests – but the initial consumer messaging was ‘fantastic’, according to nutrition and public policy expert Marion Nestle.

‘Total diet’ in the 2010 Dietary Guideline: The latest version of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans includes a new focus on the importance of total diet. FoodNavigator-USA spoke to Cynthia Harriman of Oldways to get the perspective of the organization behind the Mediterranean diet pyramid.

USDA releases 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans: The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has updated the Dietary Guidelines for Americans for the first time since 2005, with a number of small changes that could make a big difference for the food industry.

Industry welcomes USDA Dietary Guidelines supplements shift: The US dietary supplements industry has welcomed the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans which demonstrated a thawing in attitude toward supplements use from a Guidelines committee that has previously balked at recommending them.

I write a monthly first-Sunday column for the San Francisco Chronicle. This one is on the latest Dietary Guidelines.

Dietary Guidelines try not to offend food industry

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Q: What do you think of the new Dietary Guidelines that were announced earlier this week? Is there anything very new or different? And how important are these guidelines, anyway?

A: I was stunned by the first piece of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans that I saw online (dietaryguidelines.gov): “Enjoy your food, but eat less.”

Incredible. The federal government finally recognizes that food is more than just a collection of nutrients? It finally has the nerve to say, “Eat less?”

But this statement and others directed to the public do not actually appear in the guidelines. That document repeats the same principles that have appeared in dietary guidelines for decades.

The 2010 guidelines just state them more clearly. (For the news story on the guidelines, go to sfg.ly/gdgsc0.)

Obesity prevention

Its 23 recommendations are aimed at obesity prevention. They focus on eating less and eating better. “Eat better” guidelines suggest eating more vegetables, fruits, whole grains, low-fat milk, soy products, seafood, lean meats and poultry, eggs, beans, peas, nuts and seeds – all are foods.

But the “eat less” advice is about nutrients: sodium, saturated fat, cholesterol and trans fats. The guidelines even coin a new term for the “eat less” nutrients of greatest concern: “solid fats and added sugars,” annoyingly abbreviated as SoFAS.

Here is one SoFAS guideline: “Limit consumption of … refined grain foods that contain solid fats, added sugars, and sodium.”

Nutrient-based guidelines require translation. You have to delve deeply into the 95-page document to find the food translations. Eat fewer solid fats? This means cakes, cookies, pizza, cheese, processed and fatty meats, and, alas, ice cream. Less sugar? The major sources are sodas, sports drinks, energy drinks and fruit drinks.

Why don’t the guidelines just say so? Politics, of course.

Official policy

Dietary guidelines are an official statement of federal nutrition policy. They influence everything the government says and does about food and nutrition. The guidelines determine the content of school meals, the aims of food assistance programs and the regulation of food labeling and advertising.

But their most powerful effect is on the food industry.

Why? Because advice to eat less is very bad for business.

Banal as their recommendations may appear, dietary guidelines are hugely controversial. That is why I was so surprised by “Enjoy your food, but eat less.”

Consider the history. In 1977, a Senate committee chaired by George McGovern issued dietary goals for the United States. One goal was to reduce saturated fat to help prevent heart disease. To do that, the committee advised “reduce consumption of meat.”

Those were fighting words. Outraged, the meat industry protested and got Congress to hold hearings. The result? McGovern’s committee reworded the advice to “choose meats, poultry and fish which will reduce saturated fat intake.”

This set a precedent. When the first dietary guidelines appeared in 1980, they used saturated fat as a euphemism for meat, and subsequent editions have continued to use nutrients as euphemisms for “eat less” foods.

Then came obesity. To prevent weight gain, people must eat less (sometimes much less), move more, or do both.

This puts federal agencies in a quandary. If they name specific foods in “eat less” categories, they risk industry wrath, and this is something no centrist-leaning government can afford.

Eat less, move more

So the new guidelines break no new ground, but how could they? The basic principles of diets that protect against chronic disease do not change. Stated as principles, the 2010 dietary guidelines look much the same as those produced in 1980 or by the McGovern committee.

In my book, “What to Eat,” I summarize those basic principles “eat less, move more, eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, and don’t eat too much junk food.” Michael Pollan manages this in even fewer words: “Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.”

Everything else in the guidelines tries to explain how to do this without infuriating food companies that might be affected by the advice. And the companies scrutinize every word.

The soy industry, for example, is ecstatic that the guidelines mention soy products and fortified soy beverages as substitutes for meat and as protein sources for vegetarians and vegans.

The meat industry is troubled by the suggestion to increase seafood, even though the guidelines suggest meal patterns that contain as much meat as always.

The salt recommendation – a teaspoon or less per day, and even less for people at risk for high blood pressure – is unchanged since 2005, but stated more explicitly. The salt industry reacted predictably: “Dietary guidelines on salt are drastic, simplistic and unrealistic.”

In a few months, a new food guide will replace the old pyramid. Thanks to a law Congress passed in 1990, dietary guidelines must be revisited every five years. Expect the drama over them to continue.

But for now, enjoy your food.

Marion Nestle is the author of “Food Politics,” “Safe Food,” “What to Eat” and “Pet Food Politics,” and is a professor in the nutrition, food studies and public health department at New York University. E-mail her at food@sfchronicle.com, and read her previous columns at sfgate.com/food.

This article appeared on page H – 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle