Those awaiting good news from the new 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans will have to settle for some good news and some bad news.
The bad news: The 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) still believes the less meat one eats—or none if possible—the healthier one will be. The good news is there are more and more health experts who do not believe in the main foundation of the belief that saturated fats are the diet component that should be reduced or eliminated. Saturated fats are common in animal products.
The saturated fat opponents must be feeling uneasy, however, as they resurrected recommendations the 2015 DGAC had ditched, in order to underpin their saturated fat recommendations.
In addition to opposition on limits for saturated fatty acids, there is substantial opposition to the decision-making process the DGAC used this time, including not reviewing studies that involved weight loss or low carbohydrate diets. A number of groups and professionals are asking for a delay for the final report due this fall to allow more time for addressing process questions and reviewing more recent study data.
The 2020 DGAC’s draft report recommends “less than 10 percent of energy” should be from saturated fats. They rated “strong and consistent evidence” that replacing saturated fatty acids with unsaturated fats significantly reduces total and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol.
But on top of a growing pile of studies contrary to that recommendation was a “state-of-the-art review” in the Journal of American College of Cardiology, which said saturated fat restrictions are not justified and reducing saturated fatty acids had no beneficial effects on cardiovascular disease and total mortality.
As for dietary cholesterol and serum (blood) cholesterol, it was a surprise to experts that the subject even surfaced, as it was not on the list of topics to be addressed. The 2015 DGAC had dismissed dietary cholesterol as a concern, with Alice Lichtenstein, vice chairwoman of the committee, commenting the data had never supported limits on cholesterol consumption or the link to blood cholesterol levels.
In a 2015 New York Times report, Dr. Ronald Krauss, an American Heart Association fellow, DGAC member and spokesman, said the few hyper-responders to dietary cholesterol did not justify restrictions for the whole population.
Yet the 2020 Committee, after the health community’s nearly 60-year quest to find a causal link between cholesterol and heart disease and mortality, called for “additional research” on dietary cholesterol.
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics represents over 100,000 nutrition professionals. They filed comments critical of the DGAC’s process, including the failure to “transparently report the committee’s reason for exclusion” of certain studies. They added “…it is not acceptable that parts of methodology that would be essential in a written scientific paper are not part of the open information. The public’s trust in the evidence would be compromised without more clarity and research.” The North American Meat Institute (NAMI) filed similar comments.
The Nutrition Coalition (NC) was very critical that the committee ignored evidence regarding saturated fatty acids and low carbohydrate diets. Nina Teicholz, NC’s executive director, is focusing on using rigorous scientific evidence for nutrition recommendations.
Over 300 doctors and other nutrition and health professionals signed a letter to USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) regarding process issues, also referring to process complaints from some committee members. They requested steps to bolster the credibility of the guidelines, the better grounding of the guidelines in scientific methodology, and inclusion of all the relevant evidence.
During the final DGAC committee meeting, it took one member pinning down a presenter regarding the “lean meat” recommendation in one section to get clarification that “lean meat” did include red meat and processed meat in some of the studies reviewed and included poultry in others. The draft recommendation did not even mention red or processed meat.
Some of the recommendations from the National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine study would have alleviated some criticism of the committee. Having a separate specialized panel to evaluate studies used for the guidelines and assign topics according to research progress and need would have improved process, boosted guideline confidence and eased the time crunch cited by USDA and HHS.
The DGAC’s refusal to review diet patterns for those overweight leaves out two-thirds of Americans.
NAMI reminded the DGAC that 95 percent of Americans eat meat, and diet advice needs to start from existing diet patterns to be effective. Discouraging “mixed dishes” like casseroles, sandwiches, pasta dishes and pizza risks confusing Americans and reducing consumption of nutrient dense foods. — Steve Dittmer, WLJ columnist
(Steve Dittmer is the author of the Agribusiness Freedom Foundation newsletter.)
