Photo credit: CDC/ Amanda Mills
Did you know that a single document guides every federal nutrition program and policy created? This document, called the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, outlines recommendations that (ideally) help prevent disease and promote health in Americans age 2+.1
Sounds good, right?
Not so fast. Whether you agree with them or not, these guidelines underpin what you’re told to eat, what your kids eat in school, and what kinds of foods your tax dollars will support. They also inform what dietitians-in-training (such as yours truly) are taught.1 Needless to say, these guidelines are really important, and you may not like what they have to say.
How are the Guidelines created?
The existing Guidelines are updated every 5 years based on a review of evidence by a small group of experts, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. This committee compiles its findings in the Dietary Guidelines Scientific Report and submits the report to the USDA and FDA. These departments then develop and publish the official guidelines using the report as well as public and government feedback.1 (Side note: One of my former professors from UNC, Anna Maria Siega-Riz, is an advisory committee member. Cool, no?)
What’s in the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Committee Scientific Report
The committee’s 2015 scientific report was just released2, and I’m happy to say that many of the committee’s conclusions do indeed appear to be health promoting. (Confession: The full report is 571 pages long, and since I have something of a life, I haven’t read the whole thing! But I’ve got a good idea of what’s there.) While I’m delighted with parts of the report, though, other parts that rankle me. Here are the highs and lows:
The good
- Highlights the health benefits of a vegetarian eating style!
- Focuses on vegetables and fruits as especially health-promoting
- Finds that red and processed meats, sugar-sweetened foods/drinks, and refined grains are harmful. (I hope this means fewer people will feed their children hot dogs and hamburgers and sodas. A girl can dream!)
- States that diets rich in plant foods and low in calories and animal foods are not only healthy, but they’re better for the planet
The bad
- Promotes seafood, despite the mercury, PCBs, dioxins, and saturated fat that often accompany it.3 I understand that fish may be a “better” choice, but that doesn’t make it a health food. In fact, fish is so contaminated with mercury that by the federal government’s own admission, certain fish are completely off limits for pregnant women and young children, and “low-mercury” seafood like tuna and shrimp should be limited to 2 meals per week in these groups.4
- Basically says eating cholesterol is A-OK. This flies in the face of the committee’s own analysis, which states that diets lower in cholesterol are linked to better cardiovascular health and healthy body weight (see part D, ch. 2, p. 43). According to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, green-lighting cholesterol was based on just two documents: a single meta-analysis of egg studies, and a 2013 joint report by the American Association of Cardiology and American Heart Association. (The latter, incidentally, makes money whenever it certifies a food as “heart healthy”).5 Of course, it’s hard to recommend seafood while restricting dietary cholesterol, since many fish and shellfish are loaded with it.
The ugly
- Effectively avoids the question of whether lean meats are healthy or not, citing methodological differences among studies.
- Encourages low-fat and fat-free dairy. While I know that data on dairy are mixed, for instance regarding certain cancers, I think that’s exactly why it makes sense to put off making a recommendation.6-8
Well, there’s my take. Now I want to hear from you. Are you happy with what’s in the committee’s report? What would you change?
(Note: If you want to participate in public comment on the report to the federal government, you can do it here.)
References2. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Scientific report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. Available at http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015-scientific-report/. Accessed February 20, 2015.
3. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Fish: A report by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Available at http://www.pcrm.org/health/reports/fish. Accessed February 21, 2015.
4. United States Environmental Protection Agency. What you need to know about mercury in fish and shellfish. 2004. Available at http://water.epa.gov/scitech/swguidance/fishshellfish/outreach/advice_index.cfm. Accessed February 20, 2015.
5. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Petition for executive action regarding dietary guidelines. February 19, 2015. Available at http://www.pcrm.org/pdfs/health/Petition-to-USDA-HHS.pdf. Accessed February 20, 2015.
6. Michaëlsson K, Wolk A, Langenskiöld S, Basu S, Warensjö Lemming E, Melhus H,
Byberg L. Milk intake and risk of mortality and fractures in women and men:
cohort studies. BMJ. 2014 Oct 28;349:g6015. doi: 10.1136/bmj.g6015.
7. Ahn J, Albanes D, Peters U, Schatzkin A, Lim U, Freedman M, Chatterjee N,
Andriole GL, Leitzmann MF, Hayes RB; Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian
Trial Project Team. Dairy products, calcium intake, and risk of prostate cancer
in the prostate, lung, colorectal, and ovarian cancer screening trial. Cancer
Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2007 Dec;16(12):2623-30.
8. Ganmaa D, Sato A. The possible role of female sex hormones in milk from
pregnant cows in the development of breast, ovarian and corpus uteri cancers. Med
Hypotheses. 2005;65(6):1028-37. Epub 2005 Aug 24.
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I'm Lee, an RD thriving on a healthy plant based diet.
Call me a skeptic, but I feel any conclusion arrived at by “a small group of ‘experts'”–all from ONLY political and/or professional associations or financially backed by such–is hardly worth my attention…let alone my devoted adherence. Here is an editorial that fairly accurately sums up my reaction to the freshly released American 2015 DGC “Scientific” Report.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/21/opinion/when-the-government-tells-you-what-to-eat.html
As always, your mileage may vary.
If it didn’t drive so many aspects of government policy, it wouldn’t matter. But it does influence so many actions and programs, and therefore we should at least know what it says.
It also does gather a broad swath of research into one document. While some of the conclusions reached by that research are over simplified or over stated, the data is still there and true.
So thanks, Lee for chewing through this!
Jeff, I agree, the science is there! How it’s interpreted, however, is open for debate, as you noted. Also worth considering: who decided which studies to analyze, and which to exclude?
Hi Mae, I too am skeptical of some of the committee’s recommendations. But in fairness, most of the committee members are from universities. Click here for details. That said, it’s possible some of their research was funded by industry.
Interestingly, the editorial you linked suffers from its own bias: the author literally wrote the book on the health “benefits” of saturated fat. Unfortunately, she’s a bit confused on the data: We’re eating MORE meat, not less, than we did in generations prior: 195 pounds of meat per person in 2000, relative to 138 lbs annually in the 1950s. And there are indeed rigorous clinical trials for demonstrating the benefits of meatless diets for conditions like diabetes and heart disease, and the results are excellent (here and here, to start). Although I do agree with her that refined carbs are bad news!
Anyhow, the reason I came around to a whole-food, plant-based diet in the first place (although I haven’t always been the best about following it) was the large body of scientific evidence–from both clinical trials and population studies–demonstrating that it’s likely optimal for human health. So I try to stick to the science, although obviously I have my bias too.
I feel the same as you. I actually was recently considering going back to school to become a dietician, but one of the reasons I considered not to as I know there will be a focus on these guidelines and I may end up in a place of employment where this is strictly used. At least there is some good to it.
Kimmy, I wrestled with the same issue when I was looking at going back to school! I know I’ll have to stick to the guidelines during the dietetic internship, but once I’m in practice on my own or with like-minded people, I can use a whole-food, plant-based approach. That said, I’m delighted to see the guidelines shift towards unprocessed plant foods, even though they don’t go nearly far enough.
I’m thrilled they are recommending eating less meat not only for health but also based on sustainability/environmental reasons, however, as you can probably guess, I don’t think the report goes far enough! How can they say to basically eat less cows because CO2, but then encourage seafood consumption when overfishing and aquaculture both have devastating environmental impacts? I say we tackle it all! And we know which diet will come out on top based on sustainability concerns 🙂
Amy, I totally agree! For the health of the planet and the people on it, we should be moving away from eating animal foods. The fish recommendation gets me too–definitely inconsistent–but baby steps are better than nothing, right? (That’s what I tell myself, anyway…)
I can’t begin to describe how confused I am about dietary guidelines. I have gone through so many different phases in my eating habits based on recommendations from “experts” – low fat, vegetarian, gluten free, paleo, Mediterranean, supplements, no supplements. My body is not a yoyo, so a toll has been taken. Maybe some day there will be a consensus, but in the meantime we just bounce around.
Hi Gwen, I can relate to the frustration with shifting recommendations! That said, there is some common ground: Consuming more whole plant foods–especially fruits and vegetables–is health promoting. (Even the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee can agree on that.) 🙂