The Guidelines

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans is a report published every 5 years by the U.S. Department of Human Health and U.S. Department of Agriculture. This is the year updated guidelines have been published. With the release of this report there has been a lot of heated discussion about it.

Why? Well, the “heat” is because our political landscape is not exactly calm at the moment. There are pros and there are cons, just like you would

The Purpose

The main goal of the Dietary Guidelines is to help guide policy for programs such as SNAP, school lunch programs, and prison and military food service. Policy makers use these guidelines to construct menus that have to get used in day-to-day practice. They need specifics. For example, they need to know what is exactly considered a vegetable or how much protein needs to be on a plate for this age group.

Americans can use the guidelines for their own use. Historically the majority of Americans do not use this to make everyday decisions about what they eat. We pretty much ignore them and do whatever it is we are going to do.

Previous Guidelines

The previous guidelines had four main points:

1) Identifying dietary patterns needed for different life stages

2) Emphasized customization of diet to reflect personal preference, culture, and/or budget

3) Provided the different food groups to eat: vegetables and fruit, grains (1/2 whole, 1/2 refined), dairy, protein, oils

4) Gave limits for added sugars, saturated fats, sodium, and alcohol

It is a short but important list. Nothing inherently ‘bad’ about it. The report expands on each point going into good detail to explain the reasoning and specifics for each guideline. You can see how someone needing to implement a dietary policy would be able to easily reference this document.

Enter the Advisory Committee

In preparation for the updated guidelines to come out, an advisory committee is put together to review all relevant due research literature to advise what updates should be considered for the new guidelines. It is a standard practice that happens for each set of guidelines.

The advisory committee is supposed to be vetted for bias, contributions from big business, professional expertise, etc. There was some controversy that some of the committee was paid or worked with companies in the food industry. (*A note on this, I didn’t look into every person that was on the committee but it is important to keep in mind that funding for nutritional studies is hard to come by. Sometimes good scientists have to accept funding from companies in order to do good research. If you are sitting on a board of directors or advisory board to a company, I can’t help but be a bit wary of your independence on a committee like this.)

This committee worked for 2-3 years, meeting frequently (I believe it was a volunteer position) looking at the new research. They were given the directive by the government to look at the guidelines through a “health equity lens” meaning they were considering the fact that the country is very diverse socioeconomically, racially, and culturally. They were looking at the guidelines with the goal that everyone has a “fair and just opportunity” to achieve good health.

Their main recommendations were to give examples of ways to implement the guidelines such as examples of how to get kids to eat better. They suggested emphasizing the importance of eating mostly whole grains (as opposed to 50% whole and 50% refined). They suggested more education on cup and ounce equivalents so that people could understand serving sizes better. A big part of their advice was to ensure language is inclusive and considers diets that may not include diary or meat. They advised that the recommendations for limits on sugars (<10% of calories/day), saturated fat (<10% of calories/day), and sodium (<2,300mg/day) stay the same.

Let the Fighting Begin…

The advisory committee finishes up their work just as the new administration arrives. The new guys decide the old guys didn’t know what they were doing and that taking a “health equity” look is deterring from using the “best available nutrition science” to guide “humans” what to eat to prevent and reverse chronic disease. This is written in their first paragraph of their “Scientific Foundation” report (not the actual guideline report). So you can imagine this may not have sat well with the scientists that had just spent the last couple years working on this.

The Inverted Pyramid

The new dietary guidelines have eight main points:

1) Eat the right amount for you

2) Prioritize protein at every meal

3) Consume dairy

4) Eat vegetables and fruits

5) Incorporate healthy fats

6) Focus on whole grains

7) Limit highly processed foods, added sugars, and refined carbohydrates

8) Limit alcoholic beverages

The report then briefly discusses eating at different life stages, individuals with chronic disease, and vegetarian and vegan diets.

The report also introduces a new graphic, the inverted pyramid. (Apparently South Park predicted this inverted pyramid solution years ago…) While some have picked apart the new graphic, it’s just emphasizing the importance of eating whole, real foods.

Takeaways

The overall take of the new guidelines is to eat more whole, real foods, and less processed foods. I think we can all agree that is good. They didn’t change the amount of recommended saturated fat. They emphasize the importance of consuming more protein. They actually say to avoid processed foods and added sugars.

I think the biggest negative of the report is the quality. There is an incorrect statement under the Incorporate Healthy Fats saying olive oil contains essential fatty acids (it is a healthy source of fat but doesn’t contain essential fatty acids).

It is not at all written with the level of detail needed for policy makers. It is written for the general public, who have historically not followed the guidelines to begin with. The supporting “Scientific Foundation” report is probably the report that is supposed to be used by policy makers. However, when I read through it, it was liking reading a high school student’s report versus the previous report that was written like a PhD student’s thesis. There is a stark contrast in quality, professionalism, and bias on the literature cited.

Eat real, whole foods. Cut out the sugar. And we’ll probably pay as much attention to these guidelines as we did the previous ones.