Every five years, the U.S. government releases dietary guidelines for Americans to help us make the healthier choices and also to provide guidance for national nutrition policies and programs. And while the 2015 version isn’t officially set to be issued until later this fall, a new report published in the journal The BMJ is claiming there is already a major problem: The advice the guidelines use as a foundation is not based in the latest science.
This year’s advice seeks to make some key changes, notably to stop the demonization of eggs and dietary cholesterol and ease restrictions on salt intake, instead limiting sugar and meat intake — while also giving an OK to moderate coffee consumption. However, according to the report, the contributing experts failed to look closely at the most recent nutritional science, and thus got plenty wrong.
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In the report, journalist Nina Teicholz writes that the dietary guidelines advisory committee that provided the report meant to inform the new guidelines was reluctant to “consider any evidence that contradicts the last 35 years of nutritional advice.”
Conflicts of interest
In 2010, when the last guidelines were released, the Nutrition Evidence Library (NEL) was created to systematically review nutrition studies in order to be more rigorous in analyzing the science. However, the NEL was not consulted for about 70% of the topics discussed in 2015. Instead, the committee relied largely on reviews done by outside professional organizations, like the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology. And according to Teicholz, there are conflicts of interest with these group’s reviews, based on the industries that fund them. Additionally, the report underlines the fact that members of the committee have conflicts of interest that are not required to be disclosed. One member received research funding from the Tree Nut Council, while another received more than $10,000 from Lluminari, which produces content for companies like General Mills and Pepsi Co.
Saturated fat
Teicholz criticizes the experts’ advice on saturated fats, which is to limit intake to no more than 10% of total calories. Citing several high-profile studies showing saturated fat isn’t necessarily linked to disease risk, she questions the experts’ assertion that there is “strong” reason to condemn this type of fat. In fact, she says the committee didn’t use the NEL to re-review saturated fat.
Low-carb diet
Another major point of contention highlighted in the BMJ report was the low-carb diet, which wasn’t recommended by experts in their report. Although the guideline committee members said they were lacking evidence on regimens of this sort since 2000, Teicholz says there was actually a significant number of studies conducted since that year: 11 case studies, 19 observational studies, and 74 randomized controlled trials.
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Teicholz’ conclusion
So what does Teicholz recommend based on the latest evidence? She tells TIME: “I believe that the literature shows that the low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet has not produced better health for Americans since it was first introduced as official government policy in 1980. For healthy people, a reasonable recommendation would be simply to reverse out of the high-carb diet to the balance that Americans ate in 1965 before the obesity and diabetes epidemics: roughly 40% carbs, 40% fat. For people who are struggling with obesity and diabetes, which is now an astonishing proportion of our population, I believe that carbohydrate restricted diets—less than 40% carbs—should be presented as a safe and viable option.”
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