It’s 2016 and we all know what that means: Time for the U.S. government to release its latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Hooray! If you’re unfamiliar with this ritual, here’s how it works. Every five years, a bunch of scientists who know tons about nutrition get together, review a bunch of research, and come up with recommendations for how the American public should eat. These recommendations are intended to have all kinds of important ramifications including what goes into school lunches and what appears on food labels. The scientists hand these suggestions off to a bunch of politicians whose lack of nutritional knowledge is matched only by their lack of ethics. These politicians then do their best to distort these recommendations not for the public’s benefit, but rather for the benefit of various food and farm industry lobbying interests. Then the guidelines are made public and the media spends a week or two slamming them.
So I suppose it’s my turn to slam them, but I’m not going to do that. Don’t get me wrong—the baby-kissers did their best to slime up the works. But despite their best efforts, some good stuff got through. These guidelines might not be a masterpiece of nutritional knowledge, but they’re a decent rough sketch.
My favorite thing about the guidelines is that they openly admit to being just what their name implies—guidelines. They’re a starting point for anyone wanting to learn more about food in that they claim to “embody the idea that a healthy eating pattern is not a rigid prescription, but rather an adaptable framework in which individuals can enjoy foods that meet their personal, cultural, and traditional preferences and fit within their budget.”
This year’s guidelines are intended to help people focus less on individual nutrients and more on overall eating patterns. In other words, they don’t want users to obsess about X servings of this and Y servings of that. Rather, they want people to look at their overall diet in a flexible way. To back this up, they include detailed appendices reviewing three different healthy eating patterns—U.S.-Style, Mediterranean-Style, and Vegetarian—with instructions on how the vegetarian pattern can be converted to vegan. (Sorry Paleos—maybe 2021 will be your year.)
In addition to general recommendations, the guidelines make a few specific ones, the most important of which is that Americans should eat less added sugar. To be exact, no more than 10 percent of your daily calories should come from the stuff. (In 2014, the World Health Organization made a similar suggestion, adding that 5 percent would be even better.)
Regardless of your dietary dogma, it’s hard not to agree that excessive sugar consumption is the biggest nutritional issue facing Western society, having been linked to type II diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and a host of other damaging health conditions. And following the guidelines’ recommendation to avoid added sugar has distinct trickle-down benefits, helping you to avoid 90 percent of the junk foods out there.
The guidelines don’t, however, take as firm a stance on red meat. In their initial draft, the guidelines’ advisory committee suggested (in a 52-word footnote) that people reduce their red meat and processed meat intake. As you might expect, the meat industry didn’t take too kindly to this suggestion. A hearing was held and the footnote was cut. (It’s worth noting that American cattlemen apparently hold no sway over the World Health Organization, who recently announced that processed meat causes cancer and red meat probably does, too.)
Before you get too down on the beleaguered advisory committee, keep in mind that there’s more than one way to skin a cat (or cow, as the case may be). Front and center in the guidelines is the recommendation that saturated fats—found in abundance in (you guessed it) red meat—be limited to 10 percent of your total caloric intake. They also recommend that seafood intake to be increased massively across all demographics, and that meat, dairy, and egg intake be reduced in a few, including teen boys and adult men. When all is said and done, the committee may have lost its one-third-of-a-Tweet footnote regarding red and processed meats, but if you heed their saturated fat and protein recommendations, you’ll be hard-pressed to eat too much of it anyway.
Some critics aren’t too happy with the saturated fat limit—or the guidelines’ sodium limit for that matter—claiming that neither is the villain we once thought it was. But the simple truth is that the evidence in favor of saturated fat and salt is still reasonably controversial. And since there’s no harm in avoiding them, why not play it safe?
Cholesterol is also a contentious item in this year’s guidelines. In keeping with current research showing that restricting dietary cholesterol doesn’t lower levels of LDL in the blood, the committee looked poised to eliminate cholesterol limits, but then decided to simply soften the warning. There’s no longer a 300 mg daily limit, but it’s still recommended that people eat “as little dietary cholesterol as possible.” Such soft-stepping feels a little weasely, but like saturated fat, there’s really no need for cholesterol in your diet; your body produces it naturally. Whether the committee’s last minute course change was politically or nutritionally inspired, it doesn’t hurt the cause. Quite the contrary, it paves the way for eliminating cholesterol limits altogether in 2021.
Author and professor Dr. Marion Nestle, who was on the 1995 guidelines advisory committee, told the New York Times that while she applauded the guidelines for emphasizing food patterns instead of individual nutrients, she felt they didn’t follow through on that recommendation. “They make such a point of saying they’re talking about food patterns,” she said, “but they didn’t really do it. They either caved in or they don’t understand what it means. There are lots of ways in which they’re undermining the food patterns message.”
Although I have enormous respect for Dr. Nestle, I disagree. The U.S. Government is a massive, slow-moving behemoth rife with bureaucratic inefficiencies and special interests. As any acting or former U.S. president will tell you, affecting positive change in such a political environment is a laborious process. The new guidelines aren’t perfect, but they’re a step in the right direction.
Furthermore, most people looking to the guidelines for nutritional advice have neither the time nor the knowledge to deal with the vagaries that come with “food patterns.” They want someone to tell them what to eat. Thus, guidelines should always include at least a few specific, well, guidelines. And can you imagine the abuses that might arise from a lack of such specifics? Let’s not forget that we live in a country where the government once tried to push ketchup as a vegetable in school lunches.
Bottom line: I applaud the advisory committee’s effort. The guidelines may contain flaws, and they might not suit every dietary dogma, but that’s okay because this is America. So if you don’t like them, you don’t need to follow them. But those who do follow them will almost surely benefit.