US Government Nutrition Guidelines Promote Processed Food, Ignore It

US Government Nutrition Guidelines Promote Processed Food, Ignore It

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Focusing your diet on raw, whole, and ideally Organic food, and not government recommended processed food is 1 of the easiest ways to sidestep dietary pitfalls like excess sugar/fructose, harmful synthetic trans fats, an overabundance of processed grains, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and other harmful additives, while getting lots of healthy nutrients.

The rest is just a matter of balancing the ratios of fat, carbs, and protein to suit your individual needs.

One Key is to trade refined sugar and processed fructose for healthy fat, as this will help optimize your insulin and leptin levels.

Every 5 years, the US Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS) convene a 15-member panel called the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) to update the nation’s dietary guidelines.

The panel’s mission is to identify foods and beverages that help you achieve and maintain a healthy weight, promote health, and prevent disease. In addition to guiding the public at large, the guidelines significantly influence nutrition policies such as school lunch programs and feeding programs for the elderly.

The guidelines have a history of flawed advice, such as recommending Americans consume diets heavy in grains and low in healthy fats, which has helped to fuel the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases American are living with.

The upcoming 2015 US Dietary Guidelines, which are currently being reviewed by US health and agricultural agencies, have a chance to change that and set the record straight – and there had been some promising steps forward, such as a recommendation to remove warnings about dietary cholesterol.

However, with the latest guidelines to be released this Fall, a new report published in the journal BMJ has brought deserved criticism, including suggesting the guidelines are not based on the latest science.

The DGAC scientific report “fails to reflect much relevant scientific literature in its reviews of crucial topics and therefore risks giving a misleading picture,” according to an investigation by the BMJ (British Medical Journal).

The report is authored by Nina Teicholz, an investigative journalist and author of The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet.

She writes: “The omissions [in science] seem to suggest a reluctance by the committee behind the report to consider any evidence that contradicts the last 35 years of nutritional advice.”

While past committees used the USDA’s Nutrition Evidence Library as a basis for collecting studies to form the guidelines, this year’s committee looked elsewhere for data on 70% of the topics it covered.

That data came largely from professional organizations like the American Heart Association (AHA), which not only conduct literature reviews based on different standards but are also known to be heavily supported by processed food and drug companies.

In January 2009 the AHA published a “scientific advisory” recommending that Americans consume more Omega-6 fats (mostly refined vegetable oils) and fewer saturated fats, as part of the “heart healthy” low-fat, low-cholesterol diet.

In spite of all scientific data to the contrary, this is the food they recommended, completely ignoring the fact that the standard American diet is overloaded with poor quality Omega-6 fats, while being severely deficient in critical Omega-3s.

And last year, the American Beverage Association (ABA), which includes members such as Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO), PepsiCo (NYSE:PEP), and Dr. Pepper Snapple Group (NYSE:DPS), announced a partnership with the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, an organization founded, in part, by the American Heart Association.

Relying heavily on data produced by these organizations is DGAC’s 1st mistake.

Unchanged is the fact that the committee is reluctant to point the finger at America’s processed-carbohydrate addiction, instead they concluded only limited evidence exists on low-carbohydrate diets and health, so the topic is insufficiently reviewed in their recommendations.

But as Ms. Teicholz wrote in the BMJ: “… [M]any studies of carbohydrate restriction have been published in peer review journals since 2000, nearly all of which were in US populations…

A meta-analysis… concluded that low carbohydrate diets are better than other nutritional approaches for controlling type 2 diabetes, and two meta-analyses have concluded that a moderate to strict low carbohydrate diet is highly effective for achieving weight loss and improving most heart disease risk factors in the short term (six months).

… Given the growing toll taken by these conditions and the failure of existing strategies to make meaningful progress in fighting obesity and diabetes to date, one might expect the guideline committee to welcome any new, promising dietary strategies. It is thus surprising that the studies listed above were considered insufficient to warrant a review.”

Many people actually need to increase the healthy fat in their diet even more, to 50 to 85% of daily calories. This includes not only saturated fat but also monounsaturated fats from Avocados and Nuts and Omega-3 fats (real food).

But one of the most important points to remember is that you do not need to avoid saturated fats.

Saturated fats were unfairly condemned in the 1950’s based on primitive evidence that has since been re-analyzed. The evidence now clearly shows that saturated fats do not cause heart disease.

Notably, our bodies needs saturated fats for proper function of our:

1. Cell membranes Heart Bones (to assimilate calcium)
2. Liver Lungs Hormones
3. Immune system Satiety (reducing hunger)
4. Genetic regulation

“Another Key piece of information is that a high-fat, carbohydrate-restricted diet looks healthier for losing weight and making your heart disease bio-markers and diabetes bio-markers look better. There is a real range in how much carbohydrates people will tolerate,” Ms. Teicholz writes.

With the above in mind it is reasonable to draw the conclusion that the US government’s recommended diet ingredients (food) are harmful to our health.

Do your homework, your health is your responsibility. The cost of bad food is bad health.

Eat healthy, Be healthy, Live lively.

HeffX-LTN

Paul Ebeling

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