The latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans, released once every five years, are awaited but still not out, whipping up public interest with the delay. More than recommendations, the guidelines have an immense impact on federal nutrition policies and food choices for health-conscious consumers. Concern over widespread obesity and chronic diseases, preventable with a healthy diet and physical activity, helped drive the upcoming version.
With major changes expected, there’s been food-industry pushback, sniping over the science behind the guidelines and likely disappointment for environmentalists if sustainability concerns, addressed in proposed versions, don’t make the final cut. The big question is what the official version will look like — when it finally comes. “We are currently making final preparations and will release the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans this month,” according to a Jan. 4 email from a Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson.
Big Picture: Food Patterns
Looking at healthy diets overall, not just individual nutrients, was a major goal for the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, authorized by the U.S Department of Agriculture and HHS. The committee examined three dietary patterns — “healthy U.S. style,” Mediterranean and vegetarian eating patterns.
A healthy diet is higher in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, low- or nonfat dairy, seafood, legumes and nuts, the committee concluded. It’s moderate in alcohol (for adults). And a good diet is lower in red and processed meats, sugar-sweetened foods and drinks, and refined grains (in foods such as white bread, pasta and pizza crust).
If you’re not confused enough by conflicting advice on dietary cholesterol, the advisory committee is taking back its 2010 recommendation to limit intake to 300 milligrams per day. “The 2015 [advisory committee] will not bring forward this recommendation, because available evidence shows no appreciable relationship between consumption of dietary cholesterol and [blood] cholesterol,” according to the committee’s report. So that might mean a fresh outlook on eggs for people who have shied away.
Meat: What to Cut
When it comes to reducing red and processed meats in your diet, “the science is kind of slam-dunk now,” says Dr. David Wallinga, senior health officer for the Natural Resources Defense Council. He points not only to the advisory committee’s conclusions, but also World Health Organization findings that red meat is probably carcinogenic.
Although it remains to be seen how people will respond to the new recommendations, Wallinga says, he thinks they will pay attention. “The trend line is already for Americans to eat less red meat,” he says. “So I don’t think these sorts of scientific conclusions have escaped the average consumer. We’re eating about a quarter less red meat than we did in the 1970s, for example, when it peaked.”
In its report, the advisory committee went beyond the health effects of meat to address effects on the environment and long-term food supply. However, issues of whether foods are sustainable — in terms of global resources such as land, water and energy — probably won’t make it into the final guidelines.
In an Oct. 15 USDA blog post, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell wrote, “The final 2015 Guidelines are still being drafted, but because this is a matter of scope, we do not believe that the 2015 [guidelines] are the appropriate vehicle for this important policy conversation about sustainability.”
However, Wallinga hopes that’s not the final word on excluding food sustainability from the guidelines. “The jury’s still out,” he says. “But if by ignoring its sustainability, we create a future food supply for your kids or grandkids that is more uncertain, I have to think that’s bad news for their longer-term health prospects.”
Sugar Shake-Up
Added sugars should make up no more than 10 percent of your daily calories, the advisory committee concluded. Rather than replacing sugar with low-calorie sweeteners, however, people are encouraged to substitute water (not diet soda) for sugar-sweetened beverages, for example.
Some scientists disagree about recommendations to cut sugar. “The term ‘added sugar,’ from a metabolic standpoint and a chemical standpoint, is meaningless,” says Edward Archer, a research fellow with the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the University of Alabama–Birmingham.
Whether it’s a Tanzanian hunter-gatherer who eats a honey-heavy diet or an American drinking soda, it’s all the same when the body breaks it down, according to Archer, who is an obesity theorist and computational physiologist. “Honey is primarily glucose and fructose,” he says. “As is high-fructose corn syrup; as is table sugar. When you drink a Coke, high-fructose corn syrup, you’re getting glucose and fructose. From a metabolic standpoint, your body can’t tell the difference.”
Hunter-gatherer populations consume three to four times the amount of sugar as the average American, Archer says, without harming their health. “The lack of obesity and diabetes in those populations is due to high levels of physical activity,” he says.
The nutrition guidelines aren’t backed by good evidence, Archer says, and the American diet is just fine for most people as is. He’s the co-author of a series of journal pieces questioning the dietary evidence used to inform the recommendations. His latest article, in the December 2015 issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, notes that he’s received honoraria from the International Life Sciences Institute (an organization whose members include food, agricultural and chemical companies) and Coca-Cola.
People with certain conditions, like diabetes, do need to cut carbohydrates, Archer says: “Those individuals should never be drinking a sugar-sweetened beverage, period.” For healthy Americans, Archer’s advice is: “Eat, enjoy your food and get some exercise.”
Still Waiting
Wallinga says there’s plenty of evidence supporting the guidelines. “In the advisory committee, they were looking at hundreds of studies,” he says. “These are enormously complex issues, because people’s lives are very complex with a lot of confounding factors.” Food is complicated in itself, he says, with so many different products, grown in a variety of ways. “Despite that,” he says, “every five years we put together a panel of experts to pore over those hundreds of different studies — so we don’t have to — to draw some reasonable conclusions about what it all means.”
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New U.S. Dietary Guidelines: Love ‘Em or Shove ‘Em? originally appeared on usnews.com