Restoring science and common sense. Every American deserves to be healthy, but too many Americans are sick and don't know why. That is because their government has been unwilling to tell them the truth. For decades, the US government has recommended and incentivized low quality, highly processed foods, and drug interventions instead of prevention. Under the leadership of President Trump, the
government is now going to tell Americans the truth. Today, the White House released the Dietary Guidelines for Americans twenty twenty five to twenty thirty, the most significant reset of federal nutrition policy in decades. Under President Trump's leadership, common sense, scientific integrity, and accountability have been restored to federal food and health policy. For decades, the Dietary Guidelines favored corporate interests over common sense, science driven advice to improve the
health of Americans. That ends today. The new Dietary Guidelines call for prioritizing high quality protein, healthy fats, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and avoiding highly processed foods and refined carbohydrates.
Ran okay, so ooh, my face made some.
Some faces during that.
That was my dramatic rendition of an unadulterated uncut first two paragraphs of the USDA's fact sheet that they released when they released these new dietary guidelines. We'll have a link to it on our website, and it was completely uncut.
It cracks me up because, like the whole framing, this is a complete reset of everything. And I'm like, this is just like the eleventh version of a textbook with.
A hundred very little changes, very little changes.
And to imply that the changes that they have made are in any way based in science in a way that previous ones weren't is false.
To imply that.
They are not backed by industry interests is also false. So it's like, we'll get into all of it today.
Oh, I'm excited for this episode.
Erin me too.
Hi, I'm Eron Welsh and I'm Erin Alman Updyke and this is this podcast will kill you.
Today we're talking about the Dietary Guidelines Part two, Part two, Part two, the bringing back the Food Pyramid.
I think this is going to be a very interesting discussion of rhetoric and just branding, Like so much of this is branding, even looking at the design of the pyramid, which like I didn't talk about that last week.
But like there has been a lot of intention behind how this information is presented. Committees on committees on committees of like how do we turn this? Do we do a pyramid? Should we add stairs? Should we do an upside down triangle? Like whatever? I guess triangles camp be upside down, but like right right, yeah, and it's just wow.
I know.
Well, and it's interesting too because historically, the like Dietary Guidelines for Americans document has been this like pretty large, you know, hefty document that's geared towards professionals, you know, nutrition experts and people who are making the decisions about things, and not not the same document that is necessarily geared towards general public, where then they take those dietary Guidelines the DGA, and then make a food pyramid and make
this public facing you know, information for a graphic thing.
Yeah, this time it's like we got it. It's all in one.
It's just this very short a few pages, and this is the Dietary Guidelines. It is public facing, and so they've kind of just wrapped it all up in one, which is also interesting in and of itself.
It is, oh, there's so much good stuff today.
Yes, first, but first it's quarantiney time.
It is. What are we drinking again?
Erin we're drinking your daily apple we are.
It's a pretty simple beverage. It's got apple juice, pomegranate juice, lemon juice, sparkling water.
There you go, dillish refreshing.
We'll post the full recipe as if you need one on our website. This podcast will kill you dot Com and all of our social media, so make sure that you're following us there, you know.
So you don't miss do it.
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Did you know about it? We're there? Yeah, maybe you're already watching us, in which.
Case, Hi, hi, Hi, nice to see.
Okay, shall we get into this week's episode erin absolutely Okay, We'll take a break and then dive in. If anyone missed last week's episode, part one of this two part series, Aaron, you walked us through the good, the bad, and the ugly really of how we got to be here where we are today. So I think we all understand a lot more about where the concept of these dietary guidelines really comes from and the issues that have always been present in the creation of the dietary guidelines for America.
And this is a very America centric couple of episodes, but I will talk about global dietary guidelines today as well. But today's episode I am mostly focused on these newest dietary guidelines that came out in January twenty twenty six.
And what I want to.
Walk through is why it is that they've made such headlines, Like, when was the last time we ever even heard about them being updates?
Did you know they were.
Updated in twenty twenty No, because they were, of course they are every five years. Why are we hearing so much more about this upside down pyramid than we did the debut of My Plate back in twenty eleven.
My Plate still can't believe I missed a whole era of dietary guideline.
And of course, I think that part of this is down to the time in which we are currently living in, with RFK Junior being the head of the Department of Health and Human Services who made it known very clearly and very loudly that he was going to overhaul these guidelines. And I think that in some ways the kind of nutrition community, the wider medical community has been bracing for this what is it going to look like? And it's very clear that.
MAHA and the MAHA kind.
Of ideals and ideology has had a very huge hand in shaping these guidelines.
You know, I was thinking about like the Super Bowl commercial with Mike Tyston. It's aaron.
I have so many feelings about it, and I'm not even going to get deep into it, no I.
Know, but it's just like it's funny because like you said, we didn't like there weren't or maybe there were, and I just missed them because they were so not as ridiculous, like so unridiculous compared to that I genuinely thought that I was watching like a spoof, a spoof thing like it.
Came up and I was like, like an snl skit.
Yeah, like a thirty rock thing. I was like, right, it's happening. And so it is really interesting the drive for publicity and publicizing this these guidelines.
And I think that's one of the big big differences that we're seeing, like already off the bat, is the way that these guidelines are being marketed, the way that they're being talked about, the vibes behind them is like totally totally different than anything that we've seen before. Yeah, it's a lot, and there is a lot that I think that these guidelines kind of bring up that are part of larger discussions, and we don't have time for
those larger discussions today. So what I am going to focus on for this episode is how the most recent guidelines, this upside down food pyramid, if we're calling it that, what are the real key differences between these dietary guidelines and every other set of guidelines that has changed minimally
over the last several decades. There's four key differences that I'm going to kind of go through, some of which are not based at all in science, and some of which are really probably good recommendations, and some of which are somewhere in between. And then we'll compare the current food guidelines now that exist in the US to what guidelines actually look like across the globe. Like, how different are these new recommendations from global recommendations.
I'm so excited for that.
It's going to be great.
How are Americans doing on eating according to these guidelines if we're falling short in what areas are we falling short? And why? What are the barriers that we see?
Fiber? Yes, fiber is the answer.
And finally, the question that you kind of ended us with last week, Aaron, is does any of this matter? Who is going to be affected by these changes besides our global reputation?
Ready?
Oh yeah, so we're gonna also go good, bad, and ugly or like I'm going to start with like probably beneficial changes, somewhat maybe neutral changes, and then baseless changes that are probably harmful.
Wonder which those are?
I can't wait to tell you.
So the first thing to know is that they really are not that different from previous iterations. Guidelines for forever have emphasized the importance of whole grains, whole fruits and vegetables, limiting added sugar, limiting sodium, and limiting our saturated fat to less than ten percent of our total calories. That has not changed at all.
Nope.
These guidelines, similar to the guidelines from twenty twenty as well, also include a one pager on nutrition information like geared towards infants and toddlers, which is quite well put together and very very similar to the twenty twenty guidelines. Right, Okay, but there are a few big changes, like I said,
four that we're going to go through. So the first big change is that this is the first dietary guidelines for Americans to specifically emphasize that we should be avoiding consumption of quote highly processed, packaged, prepared, ready to eat unquote foods or other snacky foods. And they list specifically chips, cookies, candy as the types of foods they're talking about, and they emphasize the need to prioritize what they call nutrient
dense foods. They go so far as to recommend that no amount of added sugars or non nutritive sweeteners is needed or recommended in a diet, and multiple times in different sections of these guidelines they call out refined grains, added sugar, and added salt or sodium as something that we should be avoiding, including things like sugar sweetened beverages, which they have been railing against for a very long time now, and fruit juices. I think their stance against
fruit juices is a bit different than previous ones. They also say, and I think this is really interesting that if you're going to be eating packaged or like snacky foods, to look for ones that meet FDA quote unquote healthy claim limits.
And this is a category that exists. It was like.
Updated in twenty twenty four, these like limits on what should constitute a quote unquote healthy food.
No one knows what those are.
What. I've never heard of those, Okay, no, of course you have it.
No one's heard of it.
And the thing is that, like this is a theoretical category kind of that exists, but there's no like labeling for it. So there's no way that companies can label a food as quote unquote healthy and that you know, as a consumer, it is sticking to an actual category that the FDA has made, like that has been proposed, but right now it does not exist. So healthy limits,
we don't really know exactly what those are. Okay, Okay, they list in the Dietary Guidelines some specific limits on the amounts of added sugar that should be in a certain amount of ounces of food as part.
Of this healthy claim. But that's it.
It's only a limit on sugar, not on anything else, saturated fat or sodium or anything. So this is a potentially beneficial change. However, it does kind of merit a bit more nuance than what the guidelines are giving it.
Yeah, okay, we're going to talk about processed foods. I think someday we have.
To because an hand depth look on what processed foods or they call them highly processed foods, and that's not a thing that exists, Like, it's not a category of processing. There is a classification system called the Nova classification system that lists minimally processed, at processed, and.
Ultra processed foods.
Okay, but highly processed is not technically a term. Now is that semantics a little bit? But the problem is that to really like get at the idea of food processing, you have to like what is it that we're trying to get at here, right, because.
Like it's a little bit like you know it when you see it, Like, yes, we know that certain things are processed, but that are not inherently bad because of that processing exactly. Most of our food is processed exactly, and it's yeah, but to say that and then say, well, then that means all processed food is fine or all processed food is bad. Both of those things are not are lacking the nuance that is impactful for dietary health.
They're over simplifications on both like both ends of the spectrum essentially.
And people use them in both ways where it's like, right, well, no, there are highly clearly highly processed foods that are clearly not good for you.
No, no one thinks that cheetos are a health food, right, you know, not to name names, but not to name names, but I don't think anyone is out there eating Cheetos thinking that they're getting nutrient dense foods in their diet.
But right then there's like baked cheetos as like here's a health you don't get started. Okay, I guess it's the whole health washing.
And that's a health washing and a marketing and that that's kind of a separate issue, right, but it is part of this. And the thing is that like none of these types of foods that they are really trying to get at here, right, because what they're trying to get at is avoiding sugar, sweet and beverage, refined, highly processed carbohydrates, and other foods that have a lot of added sugars, added sodium, and tend to be high in saturated fats. None of these types of foods were recommended
by any means in previous guidelines and scientific reports. Again, the reports that are coming out of the DGAC, the committee who's making these initial recommendations that go to the DGA, they have recommended limiting them to various degrees. Previous guidelines have never explicitly discouraged the consumption of these foods. They've been we've been recommended to avoid added sugars, to limit
our amounts of added sugars, and things like that. So it's really kind of the emphasis and the explicitness of this recommendation that's different.
It's interesting too to see whether there will be an impact. And so you're right, like this seems like theoretically a step in the right direction, and I think that's going to translate to purchasing exactly exactly.
And I think that that theoretical part is so important because it's also the case that these highly processed I'm going to call them what they actually are, which is ultra processed foods, and process foods in general tend to be less expensive, they tend to be more available, especially in low income areas. They are going to be more shelf stable. Many times, they're fortified with a lot of
vitamins and minerals that people might be lacking. And so to just blanket statement discourage all processed foods is really doing a disservice if we're not also changing the way that we regulate our foods, the way that we label our foods, and the way that we provide access to foods for people. And none of that is changing with these dietary guidelines.
Yeah, all it's going to do, well, No, not all it's going to do. One of the things that's going to do is change the way that foods market themselves to no longer be highly processed like the new naked Doritos or whatever. Suddenly that's not an ultra processed food like.
Right, And that What that also does is it contributes to a level of stigma or shame associated with certain foods, yes, that we then associated exactly, and that contributes to issues of disordered eating as well as just discrimination.
Like it's we could keep going.
A can of worms that is like a Costco size can of worms.
Yes, they go even further though in this like section where they talk about avoiding highly processed foods, because they also specifically talk about limiting artificial food dyes.
We know that they're railing against.
Those as well as preservatives, non nutritive sweeteners, and if you haven't listened to our food dies episode, we have a way deep dive on that. But the fact is, there really isn't a ton of data to support these recommendations.
There really isn't like we don't have data to say that we need to be avoiding X, Y and Z preservatives or for what reason, or that artificial food dies are in any way less safe than so called natural food dyes, which again they are just lifting restrictions on the ability to license and use various forms of quote unquote natural derived I mean food like food dies are not necessary period, no, right, and none of this like so that part is really not based in data, but
it's lumped into this idea of avoiding highly processed foods. So again, that's a can of worms, and that's like if there is a change that could potentially be for the better. That might be it, So moving on now. Dairy has been I think contentious in guidelines for years and for good reason. Yeah, because honestly, the bottom line is that none of us over the age of twelve months need any form of dairy to survive as a species. Seventy five percent of the global population is lactose intolerant
as adults and cannot consume dairy period. Dairy is a good source of calcium. It has quite a lot of calcium in it, and forty six percent of Americans don't get enough calcium. Dairy in this country has to be fortified with vitamin D and many of us don't get enough vitamin D. And then dairy contains protein and it is high in saturated fat if you are drinking whole fat dairy. But for a long time, the guidelines not only emphasized like the need for dairy, dairy was a
whole owned food group, Okay, which it still is. It is a front page recommendation on these guidelines, before whole grains, before anything. But every other guideline in the past has emphasized the need to consume low fat dairy. They have recommended specifically low fat dairy items, and that is because of the data surrounding saturated fat intake.
And the truth.
Is that the more data that we have gotten to specifically look at dairy, low fat dairy versus full fat dairy, is that the data doesn't really bear out the idea that low fat dairy is truly any healthier when it comes to cardiovascular disease, cholesterol, cardiovascular mortality, those kinds of things. So whether you're consuming low fat milk or skim milk or whole milk, the data, like the newer data, it's true, doesn't really like it doesn't bear out that whole milk is truly worse than low fat.
Okay, okay.
Where it does make a difference is that whole milk dairy, which is just as processed as low fat because they take out the fat and put it back in, but it is going to have more calories and it is going to have more saturated fat. And so if you're consuming that, you probably need to reduce the amounts that you're drinking in order to stay within whatever your calorie limits are going to be for this day, right, But the new guidelines on this very first page specifically recommend
consuming whole fat, full fat dairy. They don't say, like, pick a dairy of your choice, They specifically say you should.
Be consuming whole fat dairy.
There's no data to support that, right, uh, necessarily, And again there's no data that says that anyone needs to
be consuming dairy whatsoever. And all of the previous guidelines have aired, at least the way that they have framed it, have aired on the side of caution, saying, because we know the risks of saturated fat, even though we don't have a strong indication that low fat dairy is substantially healthier or substantially more safe a choice than whole milk, we should err on the side of caution and recommend low fat options to people.
Okay, I think, and you could confused a little bit. Okay, so what you mean, So these studies and this might not be like an answerable question, but like these studies that are showing that there's not necessarily a relationship, a strong relationship between whole milk or horse skim milk or skim milk or whatever and health is that if quantities are equal, is that you know, like it's.
A great question. Our nutrition is tough, right, It is really tough.
It's really most of them are just based on like changing a recommendation. So in like, for example, DASH diet studies, which is like the dietary Approaches to stopping hypertension, or like Mediterranean diet studies where they have either allowed participants to have milk, whether they've recommended low fat milk or recommended whole milk, are they restricting how much people are drinking?
Probably not, so people are probably drinking however much milk they're going to drink, and so but in those when they have kind of allowed people more leniency and switching from low fat to whole fat and things like that, there isn't that big of a difference really, But it's true.
And it is interesting too in the context of thinking about servings and like recommended. So it's like we're now recommending any type of fat day or like dairy fat amount versus.
Specifically we're actually recommending whole fat.
Okay, well, there you go, But but I mean, like does that play Yeah, it's just I think it's It's the reason I say it's unanswerable is because like it's just there is so much there's lack of clarity and all that and what the impact is. And I think it is really difficult to take data and then translate that to advice.
Yes it is. It's really really hard.
Okay, but that is a big That is a change, a pretty a pretty good sized change that we see in these newest guidelines is the switch to emphasize the need to consume whole fat dairy products as like a very explicit recommendation.
Okay, yeah, now sure.
Next next is I.
Think the one that you're probably most excited about, Aaron, the war on protein.
Yeah.
I'm waging really poor I'm starting now. I'm fighting back against the onslaught of protein in the grocery store.
The guidelines on onrealfood dot gov, which is where you can find these guidelines, they really do specifically say that they are ending the war on protein.
As someone who lived through the nineties and the two thousands and the Atkins diet, I didn't realize that we were in a war.
I'll tell you what I think the war actually is. Arin Yeah, let.
The war on beef.
Okay, go okay, yeah, listen.
So this version of the Dietary Guidelines really puts protein on a huge pedestal, and it does so in two ways that are different from prior guidelines and not based in nutrition research or data. So first, these guidelines emphasize over and over again, both visually and in the text itself, a specific and explicit recommendation to consume your protein primarily from animals.
Right, I can pay this steak in this state in that pyramid.
Ah, it's huge.
They have a huge hole steak and entire turkey, a package of ground beef, a chrunk of raws salmon, and a carton of whole milk, all to represent your protein sources.
Okay.
They also in the text emphasize eggs, poultry, seafood, and red meat, and then later later down the line say.
Like you can get it from vegetable sources too.
But don't you dare be vegetarian or vegan or you'll definitely end up deficient. There's like a whole section on that.
Great.
The nutrition data that we have rife with biases and things and limited as all nutrition data is. All of the nutrition data that we do have point to plant sources of protein being associated with lower disease risks, lower mortality, better cardiovascular outcomes than animal proteins.
So that is what Atwater basically said, I mean Atwater was like, get your protein. However, you can get your protein animal, plant, whatever. And then at least seventy years ago it was known that plant protein was associated with lower prodict disease.
Yeah, yes, yes, plant proteins are sufficient in terms of getting us enough quality of protein, and they again reduce cardiovascular disease risk, like over and over and over again in studies. Now in these newest guidelines where they are making these recommendations, they don't provide any quantitative data to actually like prove or like any data to support this idea that animal proteins are actually healthier in any way, shape or form. Like, they don't even try to really
back this up with any quantitative data. Okay, and and we're going to get more into this in a second. But meat, especially red meat, like the giant steak that they have right there in the front of the triangle, is much higher in saturated fat than plant based proteins. And we have decades of data. This is where our nutrition data is the strongest. Reducing saturated fat is beneficial
for your cardiovascular health. Also, like they don't even mention in these guidelines, how strong of associations they are are between red meat and processed meats and the fact that they're carcinogens. Right, these are carcinogenic foods and associated with an increased risk of cancer. None of this is addressed in these guidelines. They just really focus on the need
to consume animal based protein. And the other thing that they specify for the first time in a dietary guidelines is a protein goal of one point two to one point six grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. So for one hundred kilogram person, we're talking one hundred and twenty to one hundred and sixty grams of protein.
What's that in pounds?
That's oh my god, I don't know, two point two, so that would be like two twenty trisky wow, pull that out. The current like dietary reference intakes that like, which is separate from these djas, But that's getting into semantics. The recommendation is a goal of point eight grams per kilogram of body weight, So this is up to double, like, up to doubling what the recommended target protein intake is.
And the current evidence is that the vast majority of Americans, with some exceptions for maybe older adults are getting about one gram per kilogram of protein. We're already meeting what the previous goals are. We are not deficient in protein whatsoever.
What would protein deficiency look like?
So protein deficiency can result in like muscle wasting and things like that, for sure, And it's like a very real concern if you didn't have access to protein. And there's some data that in like older Americans, especially like over seventy seventy five, that having a protein deficit is associated with increased frailty and you know, that's a fall risk and things like that. But that's only in a
subset of older Americans. The vast majority of everyone else is getting plenty of protein to support our daily needs and to support our bodily functions. The evidence that they cite that they present in these guidelines to actually support this idea that we need more protein are a few studies, some of which show that with a high protein diet people have more weight loss.
That's it.
They don't have any data to show that more protein is better for cardiovascular disease, for diabetes, for mortality, for cancer, for anything else. Just a few short term studies sixty eight percent of these thirty studies showed decrease in one weight related metric BMI or waste circumference or something like that. So there's really no data to support this idea that
we need more protein than what we're already getting. And like excess dietary protein ends up converted into fat, which is going to increase your visceral adipuocity, and that's the type of fat that puts people at risk of diabetes and metabolic disease. There's some evidence that increasing your protein intake if you are doing intensive strength and resistance training can increase your muscle mass, but they're not like that's
a separate subset and that's not the general population. Because if we were all doing more strength training, that would be great for everyone, but we're not so as a whole.
Okay, so what does this mean for we should do an episode on protein? We really should have been wanting to do a the keto diet for a long time. Oh yeah, But what does this mean for the fact that, like, you know, we're seeing this now, how long has this
been building? This war on protein rhetoric? Again? I still come back to the protein in every product that you see these days, like, that's like the newest trend it is, and what are the implications of that trend, Like what are the outcomes going to be?
It's a great question. We don't know.
They're the question though, because this is I mean, this sets us up for the protein marketing to be like heck, yes, thank you so much for doing this. Right, We're already here now look at us. We're in the guidelines, right, despite the fact that they're all ultra processed foods.
Yeah, right, yeah.
The war on protein, from what I can tell is that the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, who published the initial recommendations that they did not use to make these new guidelines, specifically said that we need to have an emphasis on plant based proteins. And they had the audacity to suggest that beans, peas, and lentils should be taken out of the vegetables group and grouped with the proteins group.
Which is wild because historically that's where it has been too. Listen, beans were with meat, legumes were with meat historically since the early days.
Yes, but peas erin they're green.
I wonder when switched.
Okay, Okay, that's the war. That's that is the war. That's the war on protein. I'm not done, okay.
Yeah.
The last, and I think the most egregious change, the ones that people are really kind of up in arms about, is the changes in terms of the recommendations on fat.
And I hinted at this already.
Yes, So, just like every other guideline forever, these guidelines explicitly say that we should be limiting our total saturated fat intake to less than ten percent of our diet. That has not changed. Yeah, because the data to support that is so strong. That has not changed. However, the new guidelines say that we should be incorporating healthy fats quote unquote healthy fats, and they repeatedly list butter and
beef tallow many times as options for healthy fats. These fats are fifty percent saturated fat compared to liquid fats like olive oils, vegetable oils, seed oils, which are like ten percent saturated fat. The guidance on saturated fat for years has been that saturated fat increases are LDL cholesterol, which is the type of cholesterol associated with cardiovascular disease, and saturated fat intake increases cardiovascular disease and mortality from
cardiovascular disease. The data is like as strong as it gets when it comes to nutrition data, and there are so so much data that shows that reducing our saturated fat, specifically in these ways. One, by replacing saturated fats like butter and lard and beef tallow with plant based fats like olive oil, vegetable oil, seed oils improves people's lipid
profiles and reduces cardiovascular disease. And number two, replacing animal based sources of saturated fat, including red meat and white meat and dairy products with plant based sources of proteins like legumes and whole grains and vegetables reduces cardiovascular disease. These are not new data, These are long standing. So these recommendations and the lumping of these sources of highly saturated fat as a healthy option is not based in data whatsoever.
And to still say we need to.
Be eating animal based protein, we need to be eating whole fat dairy products, we need to be using butter as our healthy fat, but we should be limiting our saturated fat intake to ten percent of our diet. Like, that's not feasible. You can't do all of that.
That's contradictory. Yeah, I think it's like it's a little by design because it's like providing lip service to multiple different things at once without revealing what the true intention behind it is if there is one, like can there be an aligned goal or is it just like word vomit from.
Our word vomit mouths from someone who's a pro.
And really like the way that they made these guidelines is also different than what you walked us through aarin of the typical how these dietary guidelines are made. And you told us last week that there has always been black boxes. There have always been concerns about industry ties, and there has always been a question of like how do these dietary guidelines committee recommendations actually get turned into
the DGA. And so what's kind of interesting is that in some ways the way that they went about this was more transparent.
Yeah, the checklist of like these are this is what the committee recommended, and here's what we did.
Here's what we did.
We ignored over thirty out of fifty of their recommendations, and we mostly ignored another fifteen of them, and there's like five or six that we took, So that part was more explicit. We still don't know who actually wrote
any of these guidelines. That's still a black box. But there was also an entirely separate scientific advisory committee that RFK made and he gave them a couple of months instead of a couple of years to do a so called rapid review of the evidence, and then he had his own folks, again black box, take those scientific rapid reviews and make the actual guidance from it.
Certainly not an improvement on the process, not an improvement worsening on the existing terrible structure.
Right, And the scientific advisors that wrote these scientific parts of the report shot also had tons of industry ties, every single one almost so that part is really no different, even though they're trying to frame it as this is
free from bias, et cetera. They also are very explicit in these guidelines that one of the things they really did not like about the previous guidelines is that they had the audacity to take into account things like health, equity, ethnicity, culture, socioeconomic status, race, All of these things were considered in the dietary guidelines advisory committees, actual guidelines recommendations, and this report has an entire paragraph saying, how dare you take
that into consideration that's not what we're doing here. Yeah, amazing, So points for that kind of transparency, right, And honestly, I think that one of the big things that these guidelines do is show the same exact trend that we've seen in pretty much everything that MAHA touches, whether it's raw milk, whether it's food dyes, whether it's anything, which is a real like rejection of any sort of scientific expertise and a remaking of facts to fit a specific agenda,
being explicit about it, but then also a packaging and like a branding of these very real health issues that are indeed facing Americans as something that we could fix individually by just eating more broccoli and steak. Right, Like, we have huge issues in our health system, and as we have talked about and will continue to talk about, many of us struggle to meet these dietary guidelines, and people around the globe live with chronic diseases that poor
nutrition has contributed to. But it will take structural changes to actually fix any of these issues, right.
And a willingness to actually stand up to industry and require some sort of regulation over advertising, over what they can put on a label.
And none of that has happened thus far. Now, if we take a step back and look globally, pretty much every single country has some version of dietary guidelines. Many of them do use a little pyramid shape, which is so interesting. Why has that become the thing? And there's of course a lot of regional variation in like what countries are using as like their food examples, or like are they calling things grains or starches or what have you.
But across the board there's a lot of very common themes that come out, and that are things like an emphasis on fish in many guidelines, an emphasis on lean meats and limiting or moderating meat consumption that's in most
other guidelines. Over half of countries have some specific messaging around increasing consumption of legumes and plant based sources of protein, and about seventy five percent of countries have some kind of messaging about dairy, so not all but a good chunk of them, And most of them that have anything about dairy specifically mention low fat milk or low fat dairy products. And then pretty much all countries mention things
like limiting fat to some degree. Some of them separate out the types of fat and then limiting salt, limiting sugar, et cetera.
Okay, I also.
Love that some countries go like a few steps further and like their dietary guidelines also include like conditions on how you should eat, or like recommendations on physical activity. Apparently in Brazil dietary guidelines, I don't know if they still do this, but in twenty fifteen they said that you should dine in company to develop relationships.
Oh, I love that.
Isn't that so nice?
Okay?
So if we look very broadly and like we try and incorporate all of what these other country guidelines, the World Health Organization recommendations, and what like, nutrition science more broadly tells us what really is the healthiest diet. If we look at the preponderance of evidence, a healthy diet seems to be one in which we get a wide variety of foods that are going to meet our macro nutrients so protein, fiber, carbohydrate, fat, and are micro nutrient
so vitamins and minerals requirements. It's going to be one which relies primarily on plants, including vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. And for many of us, plant based sources of protein are going to bring health benefits and animal based sources of protein can be incorporated as a part of a healthy diet. And across the board, based on all the evidence, the things that we should be limiting are saturated and trans fats, added sugars or free sugars, and sodium.
And it is.
True that ultraprocessed foods are very often high in sodium, sugar, and saturated fats.
That's the end.
Yeah, So have we have these guidelines, these ones that change every five years in the United States? We have other sort of society guidelines or like these, there's ones that were there's consistency across the globe. How are we doing or is any of us meeting any of these guidelines?
I'm so glad that you asked aarin.
That's what I wanted to tell your next Okay, good.
So in the US, at least we can look at the Healthy Eating Index twenty twenty is the most up to date ones that we have. They have a separate one for like children over age two and then another one for toddler's Okay, but all across the board we fail to align with any version of dietary guidelines for Americans. Okay, Yeah, our standard American diet, which you can abbreviate as sad nice is indeed, it's pretty it's pretty bad, right, Yeah.
The mean Healthy.
Eating Index scores for the total population was fifty six out of one hundred goal is one hundred, okay, and toddlers is sixty three out of one hundred. So toddlers are doing a bit better, which is shocking to me based on my toddlers.
I mean, sixty three though, is still.
It's not great.
Yeah, probably my kid is much less than that. That's an average, right, And these data come from like a whole bunch of really wide ranging surveys. Despite those abysmal overarching statistics, according to all of this data, the majority of individuals over age one are at or above dietary guideline recommendations for total grains okay, refined grains, which is maybe the less great option, total protein foods okay, protein and meat, poultry and eggs okay. So we're doing just fine there.
We're hitting things, yep.
Where we are.
Falling short is vegetables, including all subgroups of vegetables, and they group them by like green versus red, and orange versus again, beans, peas, and lentils, were in there asgetables. We're falling short on fruits, We're falling short on the dietary guidelines recommendations for dairy or fortified soy alternatives, huh,
as well as seafood, nuts, seeds, soy products, and whole grains. Okay, So you might ask, as I did, why do we need recommendations telling us to emphasize protein and animal protein when we're already getting enough, if not too much, and we're falling short in so many other regards. If you want to go even deeper, and you know that I do,
we can look at other macro nutrient profiles. Only six percent of us in the United States are meeting our fiber recommendations, which is twenty five to thirty five grams of fiber a day.
It's actually quite so. I've been a little bit obsessed with fiber because because I feel like we have talked about this in something else in some maybe it was a poop episodes or something. Yeah, and I was like how much fiber am? I had no concept of how much I was supposed to eat? Like, yeah, you can hear twenty five grams, thirty grams or whatever, but like, what does that actually look like right, and it's a
lot of fiber. It's it is. And so yesterday I sat down with John and I calculated his not mine, because I I for and also I've been taking fiber, like, yeah, I've been having fiber supplements and stuff and trying to eat a lot of fiber. But John is just like, well, I think I eat a good amount of fiber. And I was like, do you he does? Actually he hit thirty grams. I was like, are you kidding me?
That's amazing. Yeah, I thought he only ate chicken.
No, he's a big smoothie vegetable cuy.
And so it's like most of the.
Day is smoothie vegetables and then it's chicken and vegetables at night.
And that's great.
Rice. I think that like, it was really a good exercise for me to be like, Okay, what does this actually look like in terms of consuming fiber?
Right?
And it's I mean, fiber is like it is the one thing that I do a lot of counseling on in all of my primary care visits, okay visits when we're talking about food and diet, because it's also that like foods that are high in fibers tend to be also the foods that are good plant proteins and they have a lot of other.
Micronutrients and things. So like to get.
Your fiber from whole food sources, you are also shifting the overall diet profile that you're eating, which is like, ugh, fiber's great now more, eighty nine percent of us are getting too much sodium. See our salt episode for more.
I include myself in that.
Yeah, sixty five percent of us are eating more than ten percent of our calories in added sugar, which is a lot. Eighty two percent of us are eating more than ten percent of our calories from saturated fat already before these recommendations to increase animal protein, to increase the fat in your dairy, to use butter, and it's only older adults. About five to fifteen percent of older adults are maybe not getting enough protein. And that's like a
low percentage compared to all of these other numbers. It is true, though, like that our nutrition in the US is not great and it impacts our health. It's estimated that seven hundred billion dollars each year is spent on health care costs related to nutrition related chronic diseases. Right, so, these do have huge consequences on individual and public health.
So if we are falling short in these areas, why, like, what are the barriers that people are facing and who is going to face or who is going to see the impact of these newest changes that we're seeing. That's right, I want to go next. There are very substantial differences in access to food and in health outcomes in this
country based on race and ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Now, in this country, race and ethnicity contribute so hugely to differences in dietary intake, and it's largely due to historic marginalization and structural racism that's driving inequalities in socioeconomics and education. These are the two biggest factors socioeconomics and education that are associated with diet quality. We also see huge geographic
differences in the US. People in rural United States and in food deserts, whether in rural or urban areas, have substantially lower quality diets. And there's socioeconomics and historic redlining and food deserts where even if you have food, like let's say your bodega on the corner carries fresh fruits and vegetables, they're going to be sky high prices compared to the Walmart which is out in the urbs that
you can't get to because you don't have a car. Right, So, there's huge amounts of inequalities in our food system and that is baked into our food system. The scientific report from the Dietary Guidelines Committee that was not used to make these guidelines re really emphasize the need for us to do more research on those aspects, for us to understand what those drivers are and how we can actually
address them systematically. And the Dietary Guidelines said, absolutely not, we will not be doing that, right pure.
You're not going to acknowledge anything beyond personal.
Choices exactly one hundred percent.
But if our personal choices are that we're not eating according to these guidelines anyways, then what, like you asked last week, what impact are these changes really going to have?
And I think that one of the things that's important is that because these Dietary Guidelines are guiding policy for school lunch programs, for military nutrition programs, for what is covered by WICK or the Women, Infants and Children, which serves over forty seven million people, these changes specifically to increase things like full fat dairy to increase protein recommendations
to avoid processed foods. These could result in pretty substantial changes being integrated into what foods are available in schools.
Now, my kid.
Goes to a public school and gets breakfast and lunch at public school, which is wonderful, thank you State of California. But the food choices that he gets are often quite bad. Like he eats graham crackers for breakfast because those count as whole grains.
I'm not even joking, so.
No, I know you're not. I mean this is like cinnamon toast crunch is a whole grains.
He gets cinnamon toast crunch, whole grain, low sugar Cinnamonton's crunch. Quite often he brings home the little wet packets sometimes.
Five percent reduced sugar.
Now, yes, yes, and do you know what, they don't taste as good. But that's besides the point.
Well, but that is the point.
But yeah, yes, But so it is possible that these changes could result in choices that are higher in whole grains, that are lower in sugar, and that are lower in sodium, And that would not be a bad thing. That would be a really good thing. Will there be increased budgets for this because those foods are going to cost more money. So will this result in better food choices or will it result in less access? Will departments and programs have to decide, you know what, we can't give universal school
lunch anymore. We have to go back to having income limits on who can actually access school lunch, which again that's a bigger issue and has a whole bunch of things associated with it. Right, universal school lunch is an amazing thing. So is there going to be budgets for this to be able to implement and incorporate any of these recommendations into policy changes? Will increasing full fat dairy
be beneficial for kids? Will it end up having more calories because they're still going to be drinking chocolate milk because that's what they all choose, right, Yeah, And I think that we don't know, right, We literally just don't know. We don't know how this is all going to happen, how it's all going to shake out, So time will tell. It is the like short answer of like, how are these going to be impacted?
In theory?
You know, medical professionals and nutrition professionals also rely on these guidelines when they're counseling patients.
Or when learning in their learning, are they.
Going to rely on these guidelines or are we going to see what we've seen with the dissolution of the ACIP, where all of the other professional organizations make their own guidelines and that's actually what's used, and no one's even using these guidelines.
We don't know.
I do think, like we talked about earlier, what is so different about the way that these guidelines are being presented is how they are being marketed and how much
they are being marketed to the American public directly. And they're doing so under this guise of caring about people's health, while at the same time rejecting examining any socioeconomic determinants of health, you know, rejecting science in a lot of ways for their own individual interests, and then also marketing this with commercials like the one with Mike Tyson that shame's foods, that shames people's bodies for what size their body actually is, again without any meaningful policy change to
make sure that people have access to foods, or have the time to engage in physical activity, or like any of these other things that we know would be beneficial.
So I don't know.
Erin I am skeptical that there's going to be a lot of benefit that comes out of wrapping up these nuggets of truth or these nuggets of what we know to be quote unquote common sense in what is so hard to disentangle good advice from ideology that's not based in.
Real science, industry ideology?
Yep?
Where does it all? Like? What does the pie chart look like?
Right?
It's different for each different thing, And like I feel like what I really drew from this there are consistencies, and I think highlighting those global consistencies is really it's really interesting because there are things that haven't really changed, and there are maybe minor changes from year to year
as far as these go. But like to have a roadmap, and it's just that there's an unwillingness, especially from the federal government, to provide the funding or the resources to enable everyone to use that roadmap.
The other thing that I swear this is my very last point, Aaron, we'll see.
No, just kidding because I.
Don't have time to get into it, but I feel like it's an important thing that I don't want to just gloss over entirely. The impact of dietary guidelines on climate change yes, okay, there's really wide ranges in missions estimates of various specific countries. Is recommended diets, and if the entire world was eating an old US diet, not even the newest recommendations, it would substantially increase global greenhouse gas emissions. And now with an emphasis on dairy, and
then even stronger. We always had an emphasis on dairy, but a stronger emphasis on dairy and a stronger emphasis on animal protein at the expense of plant protein that is also going to result if it is incorporated in more greenhouse gas emissions, worsening of climate change. There was also changes with like alcohol and making it much more ambiguous what the recommendations are and not explicitly saying you should not be drinking alcohol period, which is what the
old guidelines actually said. They were like, no one should be drinking alcohol. If you are going to, it should be no more than one to two a day, depending on who you are. And now the new ones are just like.
They make your alcohol consumption, which.
Like, what does that mean? Now I swear I'm actually done erin.
Yeah, no, I mean you you bring up a good point about about emissions, and it's all I think what it also reveals is just like, how much of this again is about American agriculture, Yes, and interests in that in that area. Yeah, tell us where we can learn more about this?
Well, of course, you can read all of these guidelines for yourself. I've got links to the report that came out in twenty twenty four, and then the scientific foundation that they wrote, the new scientific committee that RFK made wrote, as well as the several page dietary guidelines document. It's all there. I also have some data like going back on previous dietary guidelines so that you can kind of
see the evolution. And then a bunch of papers about the global There was a couple of really great ones. One from twenty nineteen that was called a Global Review of Food based Dietary Guidelines from Advances and Nutrition, and then another one from twenty twenty one that was a comparison of dietary guidelines among ninety six countries worldwide. I've got that climate change paper. It was from twenty eighteen, so it's a little bit old now. But anyways, we
got so much there for you on our website. This podcast will kill you dot com.
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