The 2015 US Dietary Guidelines: Lifting the Ban on Total Dietary Fat

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2338262

by brown-dragon • 11 years ago

40 48 11 years ago

jama.jamanetwork.com

kazinator5• 11 years ago

In the new DGAC report, one widely noticed revision was the elimination of dietary cholesterol as a "nutrient of concern". This surprised the public [...]

Not any public that hasn't had its head up its ass with no internet access therein for the past decade or two.

stormbrew• 11 years ago

Unfortunately, unless you define "head up your ass" as "listening to any other people, including probably your doctor," this is definitely not true. Most otherwise rational and well informed people still seem to be under the impression that all fat is bad.

avz• 11 years ago

Never met any such rational and well informed people. How could all fat possibly be bad? Cellular and organellar membranes all over the human body (and any other organism on this planet) are built from fat [1].

These membranes conduct neural signals, release and respond to hormones, participate in immune response and facilitate all types of metabolism by enabling cell and organellum compartmentalization.

Some of the fatty acids necessary for these functions are not even produced by the human body [2] and therefore must be ingested.

I think the real question people ask is not about whether fat is bad or not, but about the benefits and risks of relative proportions of fat and other nutrients.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_membrane [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_fatty_acid

kazinator5• 11 years ago

Okay, s/ass/"collective ass"/. :)

personjerry• 11 years ago

So, supposedly these guidelines looked out for your health, but given that so many of their "findings" have been overturned, then they've basically been giving advice that actually hindered peoples' health, and so one might understand that they've actually been harmful!

This might lead one to question the validity of other government suggestions. Or even policies. Maybe that's too far. Nonetheless, I think this raises serious questions as to how much faith we can put even into the government, even their "scientific" findings.

tptacek2• 11 years ago

Stupid scientists with their stupid science that isn't alway right.

dpeck2• 11 years ago

I think the problem for is a lot of it wasn't science driven, was more economic/ag policy driving waves hands science.

jakobegger• 11 years ago

A few incorrect parts don't mean the guidelines aren't a net benefit. Just imagine what an average school cafeteria would serve if no regulations were in place at all.

douche• 11 years ago

Yeah, they used to serve real food. About 20 years ago, the school districts where I lived were buying real ingredients and the cooks were actually cooking meals. Now it's all packaged crap that they slap on a baking sheet and barely warm up.

HaloZero• 11 years ago

I'm sorry, but welcome to science. Theories evolve, new things are discovered, we make appropriate changes.

If the government stubbornly held onto their previous policies then they would be open to criticism, but the fact that things are changing is a good thing.

Nutritional science is hard, our bodies are complex.

sjwright2• 11 years ago

I'm sorry, but welcome to politics. The dietary guidelines speak more to lobbying efforts than anything else. It's disingenuous to suggest that the US dietary guidelines are aligned to the evolving theories in nutritional science.

a8da6b0c91d• 11 years ago

You get enough bad ideas hiding under the aegis of "science." Some guys claim something and pretend to be more sure about it than they've right to be. Dress it up as a scientific theory and you're personally unassailable.

I happen to think the data did and still does support restricting total fat. Highly saturated fats are mostly benign, but many fatty foods also have substantial quantities of unsaturated fats that are clearly linked to health consequences. So in practice "take easy on the fatty foods" has always been not bad for blanket general advice. They are probably making a mistake with this revision.

jonlarson• 11 years ago

Do you have a better alternative that we should put our faith in? At least the government has a somewhat transparent and, at least in theory, non-profit motivated process for creating these guidelines. Virtually any other source, other than doing the research yourself, is going to be about selling you something. And the fact of the matter is, the government probably has the most incentive of any organisation to keep people healthy.

I actually find that this increases my confidence in government recommendations. The fact that the old guidelines are being updated given new research over the past decades is a wonderful thing to see.

sjwright2• 11 years ago

We live on a big planet with many different countries populated by the same species of human. Perhaps you could start by reading what other countries' governments recommend in terms of nutrition?

tantalor2• 11 years ago

What does "lifting the ban" mean? What is currently banned?

Laforet4• 11 years ago

Currently the recommendation is that fat should not exceed 35% of total calorific intake. And the proposal seeks to do away with the cap.

Edit: added some clarifications

tantalor2• 11 years ago

I don't see how that is a ban.

shanev3• 11 years ago

As someone who's been paleo for over 6 years, this makes me very happy. I believe the paleo community had a lot to do with raising awareness of beneficial fats, promoting pasture-raised meat, and coconut oil and butter over industrial seed oils like canola.

DiabloD32• 11 years ago

Thanks to Paleo, I went from 340 pounds to 214 in exactly one year, and I'm now down to 190. People who've been part of Paleo already know the FDA avoids science as long as possible as not to piss off large Congressional lobbying groups.

I expect to get downvoted, and honestly, I don't care. Downvoting doesn't change the fact I lost all this weight by purposely ignoring the FDA's recommendations.

Laforet4• 11 years ago

Notwithstanding the "fat-free everything" fad, the best epidermiological data we have so far suggest that fat consumption is highly correlated with coronary heart disease and all sorts of late-life complications. This could be wrong or out-dated, but FDA is only acting on the mainsteam scientific opinion that fat should be limited in a typical diet.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/o/cochrane/clcentral/articles...

USDA, on the other hand, has been deeply troubled by the public's distaste of fat as they have an obligation is keep dairy farmers afloat. To this day they have been trying all sorts of things to promote fat consumption without much thought to the health consequences. South Park touched on the subject in the episode "Gluten Free Ebola", but I guess most people missed that point. New York Times have done a good article explaining the economic and politics between the FDA-USDA feud.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/us/07fat.html

Finally, one must note that individual idiosyncracies play a major role in how we respond to external inputs such as diets, exercise and medication. I am glad that paleo diet worked out for you, however please bear in mind that it may and may not work for everyone when you push it.

justwannasing• 11 years ago

My son went from 320 to 210 in nine months while I went from 263 to 188 in the same amount of time so I can verify it certainly helps though overeating is possible on paleo, too.

However, I should note that we were working out in a gym three times a week and, after quitting that due to boredom and quitting paleo cause I love bread and ice cream, I went to 208 pretty quick.

So Paleo is not a cure all. Being a programmer who sits on his butt all day doesn't help at all.

jensen123• 11 years ago

I've looked at a bunch of paleo blogs. It surprises me that almost all of them include coconut and olive oils. As if hunter-gatherers in the paleolithic era could drop by a grocery store and buy themselves a jar of oil. Now, it seems likely that whole coconuts and other nuts are healthy, but oil??? Isn't oil basically like other foods that are not whole, such as refined sugar (consists of only sugar and no other nutrients) and refined grains (almost only starch)?

GordonS3• 11 years ago

I don't know for a fact, but I'd it's possible that rendered animal fat might have used for cooking (and potentially other uses too) in paleolithic times - so no need to buy a jar of oil, they'd just make their own :)

shanev3• 11 years ago

You bring up a very good point. I guess it's important to understand that paleo isn't an attempt to copy a hunter-gatherer diet as that would be impossible today. It's an attempt to get as close to it as we can with today's domestically available food. Coconut oil and olive oil are suggested as replacements for PUFA (polyunsaturated) oils such as canola and vegetable oil that oxidize easily and cause inflammation. It's similar to how honey is suggested as a replacement for refined sugar.

tsigo• 11 years ago

Still no recommended daily allowance for sugar, huh?

bobbles• 11 years ago

Current WHO guidelines state 6 teaspoons a day total sugar intake for the highest level of health benefits. Really wish food regulatory organisations like this would start actually taking note of that

lucaspiller• 11 years ago

That equates to 24g (1tsp of sugar is 4g) or around the same as in a can of Coke. That seems very low, is the sugar overuse that bad?

kazinator5• 11 years ago

Yes, you have to limit total fat, because it contains calories. You can only have so many calories. Therefore, by inescapable reasoning, there must exist a limit on total dietary fat for everyone. (Moreover, that limit cannot be 100% of your caloric intake, because 100% caloric intake from fat constitutes malnutrition.)

The 2015 US Dietary Guidelines: Lifting the Ban on Total Dietary Fat

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