Rejecting the advice of its scientific advisers, the federal government has released new dietary recommendations that sound a familiar nutritional refrain, advising Americans to “make every bite count” while dismissing expert recommendations to sharply reduce consumption of sugar and alcoholic beverages. The “Dietary Guidelines for Americans” are updated every five years, and the latest iteration arrived on Tuesday, 10 months into a pandemic that has posed a historic health threat to Americans. Confined to their homes, even those who have dodged the coronavirus itself are drinking more and gaining weight, a phenomenon often called “quarantine 15.”
Earlier this year, a 20-person committee of scientists known as the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee recommended that the departments modify the guidelines to suggest Americans consume less than 6% of calories from added sugars, citing high rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancers in the U.S. – all underlying conditions that contribute to a higher likelihood of severe COVID-19.
For the average American, added sugar accounts for more than 13% of daily energy intake – almost 270 calories – most of which comes from sweetened beverages, desserts and sweets, snacks, coffee and tea, candy and sugars, and breakfast cereals and bars, according to the guidelines.
The committee also recommended that Americans who drink alcohol should drink no more than one drink per day, where one alcoholic drink is equivalent to 12 fluid ounces of regular beer, 5 fluid ounces of wine, or 1.5 fluid ounces of 80 proof distilled spirits.
In general, processed food and beverage companies have an intense interest in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the nation’s leading set of science-based nutrition recommendations.
But instead the US government released a report that many experts say shows just how much it succumbed to pressures by the meat and the soda industry — yet again. As expected, due to strong lobbying by the meat industry and the resulting strong pressure that Congress put into the developers of the 2015 DGAs, the recommendation to reduce consumption of red and processed meats was not included. I know most people believe it would lead to some type of dystopia, but no society has ever become worse off because of fewer government controls. The dystopias happen in the exact opposite environment.
In the midst of a worldwide obesity and diabetes crisis, we don’t need more input from experts who aren’t paying attention to the latest science or who can’t break free from 50 years of conventional thinking about healthy eating. Promoting the same dietary advice over and over again while expecting different results is indeed a kind of insanity, and worse, is doing nothing to combat rising disease and death rates. Consumers need solid information about how to eat for good health
No comments:
Post a Comment