Three Reasons Why 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans Are Useless
Every five years, the government tries to teach Americans how to eat properly and what kind of food to put in their mouths. Eat more vegetables. Do not abuse sweets. Stay away from fast food. All these recommendations are based on the best available and most up-to-date nutritional science for leading a healthy life and are familiar to us from childhood. But what do we really know about healthy nutrition for sure? Do we really believe in the absolute invincibility of the dietary recommendations?
Earlier this month, the Department of Agriculture and Health and Human Services issued the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans—a 571-page report containing the nationwide standard for national food programs. The guidelines were first issued in 1980 and are updated every five years. A group of fourteen appointed high-competent scientists and doctors have been working on the report that designed to help people make healthy dietary choices and give health-care providers, public health agencies, and educational institutions a pillar for creating their federal nutrition policy. That means that the nutrition plan your doctor recommends you or your child’s school lunch menu were likely to be developed on the basis of these recommendations.
In short, this time, the guidelines urge Americans to cut back on sugar and sodium, eat less red meat and food that contains saturated fats, and focus on vegetables. And now you can safely drink up to five cups of coffee per day without a twinge of conscience! Moreover, the doctors said that you should eat as little cholesterol as possible, so eat egg yolks (according to the doctors, they are not high in saturated fat) and wash them down with another steaming cup of Americano.
As you can see, the new Dietary Guidelines look more than controversial: along with some well-known food recommendation we used to follow, it includes a number of points that provoked a lot of healthy debates. Some public health experts express concern that the guidelines contain mixed recommendations that could be interpreted by people differently. So, while you are thinking whether the suggestions are right or wrong, we want to tell you why these guidelines (or any other ones) are useless in some sense.
This Year’s Advice Could Not Necessarily Be Next Year’s Advice
You must be aware of it: there is no guarantee that the next Dietary Guidelines will include the same recommendation as the current ones do. Furthermore, it seems like the guidelines are created with the help of the Price is Right wheel that turns every five years and gives a new portion of nutrition advice. For example, we used to think that cholesterol was the devil in the world of healthy nutrition, so we needed to limit our intake to 300 milligrams a day—slightly less than the amount in two eggs. But the latest guidelines dropped the previous recommendation calling dietary cholesterol a “nutrient of concern for overconsumption.” We used to think that meat is the most important source of protein and kids should eat it every day. But now we are recommended to abandon consumption of red meat or processed meat because according to recent studies, there is a strong link between this food and the number of incidents of heart diseases and cancer. Drink less coffee. Now drink more coffee. Abandon coffee. Eat meat. Be vegetarian. Drink five, or wait, six, no, eight glasses of water a day.
And the worst thing for people obsessed with healthy diet is that each recommendation is based on a study of a very competent medical institution. It is no wonder that the 2012 Food and Healthy Survey by the International Food Information Council found that for half of Americans it is much easier to deal with their taxes than to compose their healthy diet and follow food safety practices.
Keep Calm and Enjoy Your Meal
All this noise around food you should or should not eat can cause serious stress, and last Monday’s steak for dinner can cause a sense of guilt for the entire next week. Throw it out of your head! Everyone has a list of healthy eating habits in his head which he relies on to some extent. And we are sure that there is no mentioning of the possibility that the classic English breakfast of omelet with bacon will immediately kill you. Perhaps, just in perspective.
There is a list of unbreakable rules for people having a healthy lifestyle: minimum sugar and junk food, more plant food and whole grains; no overeating and no starving; fresh water instead of Pepsi, etc. Of course, there could be some variations and deviation from the system, like vegetarianism, veganism, religious diets, and other nutrition practices, but the core idea of them all is balance. The latest Dietary Guidelines are not the Bible but simply some general recommendations that depend on global statistics data and scientific research and influence the United States food-related laws and regulations.
Instead of immediately changing your already healthy habits and following the next big diet trend, it is more important to focus on what really counts. Advertising agencies make a huge amount of money on fanatics, so do sports clubs, retailers, catering companies, and many, many others.
It Reeks of Industry Interest While Displacing Public Needs
The government will never tell you not to eat red meat or drink Coca-Cola, and the only reason is industry interest.
The first chapter of the guidelines actually only recommends people to eat less or more of the particular kinds of food and gives some advice, but none of these recommendations appear in the executive summary. Just the recommendation to eat less red meat was enough to anger the meat industry, especially beef producers, whose large-scale operations were accused of taking a big toll on water and land. Later, federal officials promised not to include environmental factors in their guidelines. The cattle industry does not like the government telling Americans to stop eating meat, so food manufacturers and food producers insisted the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Heath and Human Services avoid the “not to eat” wording. As a result, many experts claimed that the guidelines are based on out-of-date science and research from years past. An author of Food Politics and former chair of the Department of Nutrition at New York University Dr. Marion Nestle believes that there is a great deal of money at stake when it comes to what the guidelines say.
0 comments:
Post a Comment