Tag Archives: dietary guidelines

NY Times: “U.S. Diet Guidelines Sidestep Scientific Advice”

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NY Times (12/29/20): U.S. Diet Guidelines Sidestep Scientific Advice

An excerpt:

“Rejecting the advice of its scientific advisers, the federal government has released new dietary recommendations that sound a familiar nutritional refrain, advising Americans to “make every bite count” but dismissing experts’ specific recommendations to set new low targets for consumption of sugar and alcoholic beverages...

The dietary guidelines have an impact on Americans’ eating habits, influencing food stamp policies and school lunch menus and indirectly affecting how food manufacturers formulate their products…

The new guidelines do say for the first time that children under 2 should avoid consuming any added sugars, which are found in many cereals and beverages.”

USDA Website: Dietary Guidelines for Americans

Related article: NY Times (Print edition 12/27/20) Obesity Rates Soar in China and Officials Take Action. Online (12/24/20): Influencers May Face Fines as China Tackles Obesity and Food Waste An excerpt:

“34.3 percent of adults were overweight and 16.4 percent were obese. It looked at a group of 600,000 Chinese residents between 2015 and 2019. By comparison, 30 percent of Chinese adults were overweight and 11.9 obese in 2012…obesity among American adults has increased 12.4 percent over the past 18 years, with 42.4 percent of adults in the United States now living with the condition.“

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Scrutiny Over Expertise with Dietary Guidelines

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From NY Times: Scientific Panel on New Dietary Guidelines Draws Criticism from Health Advocates

An excerpt:

More than half the members of a panel considering changes to the nation’s blueprint for healthy eating have ties to the food industry…

Marion Nestle, a nutrition expert at New York University who served on the advisory panel in 1995, said the large number of experts with industry ties reflected the dearth of public funding for nutrition science, which forces many researchers to accept funding from food companies and industry associations. “Anyone who thinks it’s not OK to accept corporate money would never get appointed to that committee,” she said. “That’s considered so biased that you’re too biased to function.”

Despite concerns about this year’s process, Ms. Nestle said she believed the new guidelines would likely resemble the recommendations that were issued five years ago. The bigger issue, she said, is that most Americans will find the guidelines hard to decipher and unsure how to apply them to their own eating habits.

“Every five years, the guidelines get longer and more complicated,” she said. “In my view, the advice is the same: Eat your vegetables don’t gain too much weight and avoid junk foods with a lot of salt, sugar and saturated fat.”

My take: Most well-informed individuals lack confidence that this the administration is working to improve dietary guidelines, regardless of who is selected to be on their committees.

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