Conflicting Nutritional Recommendations
Why are we getting conflicting nutritional recommendations from the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, American Diabetic Association and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Agriculture? Should they not come to a conscientious on dietary guidelines?
Don’t we have enough studies on nutrition to establish unified guidelines for good nutrition? What causes the conflicting information regarding the guidelines? A closer look at on nutrition researches shows a good number these studies that have been sponsored by different sectors of the food industries which are skewed to promote their business interests and not necessarily for us the consumers.
Major Health Organizations With Conflict of Interest
I googled, for example, the company sponsors of the American Dietetic Association and found among them are Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Abbott Nutrition, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Mars, SoyJoy, Turivia, Subway, Jamba Juice, Monsanto Funds, and many pharmaceutical companies. These are large multi-billion corporate food manufacturers. Pharmaceutical companies sponsors who produce antibiotics, growth-enhancing products for animals and other chemicals used in pesticides. Event sponsors for meetings were American Beverage Association, ConAgra Foods (producers of an assortment of processed foods for stores, restaurants and food service establishments), Post Cereal (cereal manufacturer) and Safeway (a grocery retailer).
I checked the American Cancer Society, among their sponsors, are: Tyson Foods (the largest supplier of poultry meat, Redners (retail food company), Walmart, Kroger, and several large pharmaceutical companies.
Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry
From Barbara Roberts, M.D. and Martha Rosenberg “The American Heart Association (AHA) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC) released new cardiovascular disease prevention guidelines. They are a gross examples of much that is wrong with medicine today.”
The new guidelines propose a vast expansion of the use of medication statins (cholesterol lowering drug) in healthy people, recommending them for about 44 percent of men and 22 percent of healthy women between the ages of 40 and 75. According to calculations by John Abramson, lecturer at Harvard Medical School, 13,598,000 healthy people for whom statins were not recommended based on the 2001 guidelines now fall into the category of being advised to take moderate or high intensity statin therapy.
The American Heart Association (AHA) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to “build healthier lives free of cardiovascular disease and stroke.” Yet in its 2011-2012 financial statement, the AHA noted $521 million in donations from non-government and non-membership sources and many well-known large drug companies, including those who make and market statins, contribute amounts in the $1 million range.”
As Jerome Hoffman, M.D., Professor Emeritus of Medicine at UCLA wrote recently with regard to these guidelines: “How did we arrive at a place where conflicted parties get to make distorted semi-official pronouncements that have so much impact on public policy?” How indeed?
Instead of recommending lifestyle changes in diet and exercise they recommend the use of pharmaceuticals for heart disease prevention. In short, support pharmaceutical products of their sponsors on the bases of studies that were sponsored by the same companies.
Influence of Food Industry Lobby
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Agriculture has an advisory committee that releases nutritional guidelines every five years. The latest released was in 2015. But a number of leading nutrition experts—including some tasked by the government to advise it on the latest research—say the guidelines are influenced too much by food manufacturers, food producers, and special interest groups.
“It’s upsetting to see cycles of misinformation coming back over and over again,” says Dr. David Heber, founding director of the University of California, Los Angeles, Center for Human Nutrition. “The public has been confused and will remain confused by these guidelines.”
Dr. Frank Hu, one of the members of the committee, says “The food industry has a very strong influence especially in the advice on red meat consumption, which lobbied not to especially strongly advice from staying away from eating processed meats (hot dogs and salami) which has been known to be linked to a high incidence of cancer, and the heavy eating of red meat which repeatedly in studies shows a higher incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer. The committee instead recommended eating processed meats but to just cut down on the amount. It is just like saying it alright to smoke just cut down on the amount”
The guidelines still recommend a high intake of carbohydrates and avoid fats. “This advice to eat more carbs and avoid fat is exactly backward if you want to improve health and lower body weight,”says Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco. He and other nutrition researchers say the popularity of anti-fat, pro-carb guidelines helped fuel a rise in diet-related health problems. The fats that need to be avoided are the trans-fats. A recent report from the Harvard School of Public Health lists lower trans-fat consumption as one of the major reasons rates of premature death and disease fell among Americans adults from 1999 to 2012.
The guidelines also say the average American doesn’t consume enough dairy products and recommended the increase their intake of dairy products. “There’s just no scientific evidence to support such large amounts of dairy consumption,” Harvard’s Dr. Walter Willett says, adding that dairy industry influence may have played a role in that as well.
On closer examination of these guidelines reveals the evidence of the underlying food politics. The Department of Agriculture supports the meat and dairy industries with subsidies on one side and there is the scientific knowledge on the other. The advisory committee is under pressure by the business interests of the food industry which undermines public interests for their advantage.
That being said the author of this article has reviewed the latest US Department of Agriculture Dietary Guidelines for 2020-2025 (click to go to website) have note significant improvement in their recommendations. Now they recommend on Dairy; including fat-free or low-fat milk, yogurt, and cheese, and/or lactose-free versions, but fortified soy beverages and yogurt as alternatives. On Protein foods they recommend: including lean meats, poultry, and eggs; seafood; beans, peas, and lentils; and nuts, seeds, and soy products. You notice they have dairy and lean meats as first choice. They recommend this time low-fat or fat-free dairy products and lean meat and no mention of processed meats.
The Covid pandemic has brought into focus the dietary caused chronic diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, kidney failure and heart disease which increases the severity of illness and mortality due to the Corona virus. At its core, the Dietary Guidelines has a public health mission—that is, health promotion and disease prevention.
Another source I found to be simple and very informative was the Canada’s Dietary Guidelines (click to go to site). They recommend: “Vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and protein foods should be consumed regularly. Among protein foods, consume plant-based more often.” Health Canada also recommends water as the beverage of choice to support health and promote hydration without adding calories to the diet.
Consumer Beware
There is indeed conflicting nutritional advise out there. A Canadian study found that government-run sites were consistently accurate in the Canadian system in their health advice, but news sites were right only 55 per cent of the time and those that were sponsored by a product or service gave no helpful advice. The Canadians offer free universal healthcare to its citizens, so there is greater incentive for the government to keep its citizen as healthy as possible. This just shows us that we need to be discriminating on our source of nutritional information.
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