The End of Dietary Guidelines for Americans?

United States law mandates that Dietary Guidelines for Americans, containing "nutritional information and guidelines for the general public," be issued every five years. The 2015-2020 edition of Dietary Guidelines for Americans was recently released, the eighth such set of guidelines published since this process began in 1980. Here's hoping these are the last such governmental guidelines issued. Does this mean I reject a connection between diet and health? No. Is it because I think these guidelines provide bad dietary advice? Not really -- at least, not if the guidelines are judged based on the answer to this question: If the guidelines as written were followed by everyone in the U.S., would this lead to an overall improvement in health? Despite reasonable differences in how people interpret the science behind the guidelines, the answer to that question is most likely "Yes." Unfortunately, however, this is the wrong question. The real question we need to ask of the guidelines is this: Will the promulgation of these guidelines (including how they are interpreted and responded to by the public, legislators and regulators, the food industry, lobbyists and other stakeholders) lead to an overall improvement in health? The answer to this question is probably "No." Worse still, there is a reasonably high likelihood that the totality of effects will lead to a net harm in population health, as past guidelines arguably have. It isn't immediately obvious why these two questions have...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news