New USDA Dietary Guidelines Slightly Less Harmful

myplateWhile the new, improved, USDA/HHS diet will be a poor one for something like half the US population, there are some improvements.

The USDA, along with the HHS has issued new dietary guidelines. By law, they must do this every five years, so we are stuck with this one until 2021.

Here are some rather harmful suggestions that are unchanged:

  1. Eat lots of grain and fruit.
  2. Avoid saturated fat.
  3. Eat low-fat dairy.

Different people have different dietary requirements. If someone is type 2 diabetic, or pre-diabetic, these suggestions are terrible. They will almost certainly make the disease worse. How many Americans are diabetic or pre-diabetic? Half the country, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Adult onset or type 2 diabetes is caused by sugar and starch overload. This diet does nothing to alleviate that.Here is the ideal diet for adult onset diabetes. It will usually cure it all by itself. This is from a 1917 cookbook. It is still the correct diet.

Dibetic-cookbook-forbidden-food

Grain Promoted to Food Group

Grain has been elevated to the status of “food group.” This is insane. Grain is so nutrient poor that it is hardly food at all. It is essentially just sugar.

Saturated Fat Is Still the Bad Guy

sat-fatAbout saturated fat, they have this to say, “Additionally, strong and consistent evidence shows that replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats is associated with a reduced risk of CVD events (heart attacks) and CVD-related deaths.”

What? This is mythology. Study after study has proven the opposite.

Here’s the latest from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition: “Conclusions: A meta-analysis of prospective epidemiologic studies showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD.”

This study looked at 21 other studies that covered over 300,000 people. Still the myth lives on. It is just assumed to be true. No reason why saturated fat would be worse than any other fat is ever given. Saturated fat is the body’s preferred fuel.

Some Bright Spots

However, other than making half the country sicker, there are a few bright spots. First, they suggest people consume less than 10% of their calories a day from added sugar. This is certainly a good idea. However, it ought to be pointed out that fruits are high in sugar, and grains are (once the intestines have processed them) 100% sugar.

It isn’t clear at all why they believe certain sugars are OK and others are bad. But getting rid of some of the sugars is better than keeping them all, we suppose.

Dietary Cholesterol May Be Reprieved

We have saved the best for last. You are now allowed to have eggs. And eggs are full of dietary cholesterol. This is a great breakthrough. How thoroughly modern.

Ancel Keys, a very famous nutrition researcher from the ‘40s to the ‘80s, led a war against saturated fat, believing that it raised cholesterol and caused heart disease (untrue). But even Keys pronounced dietary cholesterol innocent, proclaiming in 1997: “The evidence—both from experiments and from field surveys—indicates that the cholesterol content, per se, of all natural diets has no significant effect on either the serum cholesterol level or the development of atherosclerosis in man.” This is hardly the way the ever-political Keys was hoping things would turn out, needless to say.

But it wasn’t news in 1997 either. Keys had said the same thing in 1952.

1952? It’s been a while.

But countless millions have been told to avoid eggs and the like. And still are. Most people who love eggs are enraged to learn that the prohibition that was in effect for the last four decades was completely bogus.

But wait, there’s a late breaking development. The OK to have eggs may be rescinded. A group called Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine has filed a lawsuit claiming (we swear we are not making this up) “… members of the dietary guidelines advisory committee had close ties to the egg industry and that they had relied too heavily on industry-funded studies.”

Ah, it’s the sinister egg cartel up to no good again. And who would have thought? Were they funding Ancel Keys in 1952? Bet they were!

You might wonder exactly who these brave souls at the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine are, taking on the powerful egg mafia like that. Well their name is a wee bit deceptive in that only 5% of the committee are actually physicians. Though you would never guess it from the title, Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine’s primary function is to promote a vegan lifestyle. It takes a bit of digging through their website to figure this one out though. Perhaps vegan lifestyles are best promoted indirectly.

We will be direct though. The recommended American diet is once again high-carb, low-fat, and is again going to make people sick that cannot metabolize such a diet. A real healthy diet can be found here.

Do enjoy the eggs. (And have some bacon with them.)

  1 comment for “New USDA Dietary Guidelines Slightly Less Harmful

  1. Jim
    January 18, 2016 at 3:16 am

    I find it so amazing that these guidelines can be established in the face of well understood research!! How can so-called intelligent individuals sitting on a committeee charged with such an important responsibility be so easily bought off when a nation’s health is at at stake? They really need a committee picked from individuals with appropriate education and experience and without any association to the sectors affected by establishing nutritional guidelines – like that’ll ever happen!:)

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