Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by brodouevencode | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

brodouevencode

The new dietary guidelines are much more sensible IMO, compared to the food pyramid or MyPlate.

https://cdn.realfood.gov/DGA.pdf

View on HN

The scientific report is much more detailed: https://cdn.realfood.gov/Scientific%20Report.pdf

I agree with siblings that nothing jumps out (to my non-expert eye) as "very extreme".

EDIT: Removed long-winded snark after a more careful reading of the linked document.

I don't see anything extreme, but the primacy of proteins (and especially meat-based protein) and dairy seem suspicious considering the broader rhetoric coming out.

I wonder if a US economy would be able to function if people at scale ate more healthily and sustainably. That would mean less of most things and more of vegetables, legumes, greens, all that unsexy stuff that is much less labour and energy intensive.

The second order effects of not having to grow food for our food, and grow food for ourselves in the first place instead are probably too negative.

It recommends eating more saturated fats from dairy and meat, both of which are very bad for CVD.

> In general, saturated fat consumption should not exceed 10% of total daily calories. Significantly limiting highly processed foods will help meet this goal. More high-quality research is needed to determine which types of dietary fats best support long-term health.

So that ends up being roughly 20 grams of saturated fat. I still consider that quite high, given that there is a strong correlation between saturated fat consumption and CVD.

> there is a strong correlation between saturated fat consumption and CVD

Reference? Many of the old studies have been proven flawed and, no surprise, corrupt [1]. Recent studies seem to suggest that it's only linked for some people.

Disclaimer: I am nearly uneducated with this topic, but find it increasingly hard to trust anything nutrition related, where big money is involved.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9794145/

While I don't have studies on hand, I recommend watching `Viva Longevity!` on YouTube. He makes a case for the Ancel Keys studies, and why saturated fat is bad and why fiber is good.

It's been nearly a year or two since I've looked into it, but basically there is a lot of money in marketing for the beef and dairy industries, and that includes lobbying and influencing the outcomes of scientific studies. It's worth scrutinising claims against the Ancel Keys studies soley based on the fact, in my opinion.

I really wish people would stop sharing that article as if it means anything. Nina Teicholz is not who you should be getting your science from.

Her views are not the scientific consensus. She is not a scientist, she is a journalist with an agenda.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Teicholz

Fair enough! I was not aware of that. But she's far from the only one. There appears to be a wall of meta-analysis stating the same, but again, I'm naive and just googling.

Diary and beef are huge industries, with the processors dominating the industry. Vegetable, legume, and grain processors are much more fragmented.

The dairy and beef industry can and do pool their money into paying for scientific studies [to show the results they want]. This manifested itself with a coordinated attack on the Ancel Keys studies.

So just reading meta-analyses saying the inverse is not going to help you arrive at the truth, when the well has been poisoned. I personally don't have the literacy to sort fact from fiction, but I know that cardiologists tend to believe the Ancel Keys studies. That's enough of a recommendation for me to believe it to.

Plus I was able to reduce my cholesterol from like 7.0 to 2.4 by eating high fibre and low saturated fat for about 6 months.

Neither should we have trusted Ancel Keys, but here we are

That is quite an extreme take, and one that sounds like it was born from parroting social media takes. Ancel Keys was largely correct, and much of what he said is corroborated by modern science. Probably his main issue was that he was a bit too focused on saturated fat, which is not wrong, but not the only factor. He was wrong that sugar is just empty calories, though he never recommended replacing fat with sugar.

Modern science agrees that saturated fats lead to CVD, but replacing saturated fats with refined carbs also leads to CVD, which Ancel Keys didn't believe (though, to be fair, the populations he studied didn't have access to the types of refined carbohydrates we have today)

The dietary guidelines derived from his work did backfire, but Keys never said to replace saturated fats with refined carbs, which is what ended up happening. He advocated for substituting different fats. But the message that ended up being received was "no fat at all", which no scientist ever actually recommended AFAIU.

The diet he actually recommends is well studied, and found to be protective.

I guess avocados and coconuts aren't manly enough.

"The recommendation to limit dietary saturated fatty acid (SFA) intake has persisted despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Most recent meta-analyses of randomized trials and observational studies found no beneficial effects of reducing SFA intake on cardiovascular disease (CVD) and total mortality, and instead found protective effects against stroke." PMID 32562735 - Jun 2020, Journal of the American College of Cardiology

Saturated fat isn't bad for CVD, unless you eat it together with carbohydrates.

This is dairy/meat-industry misinformation. Both industries really don't want you to give up those foods, so they pay to sway studies. If you want to know the truth about saturated fat, ask your cardiologist which foods they think contribute to cholesterol, high blood pressure, and therefore CVD.

That would be simple carbohydrates, aka sugars.

> Protein serving goals: 1.2–1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, adjusting as needed based on your individual caloric requirements.

it's crazy the us gov put this out and is still using kilograms for this formula

anyway, i don't find anything here that stands out or is obviously against the consensus, other than recommending tallow as a cooking fat. i don't see any signs of seed oil extremism or sat fat trutherism otherwise. there's even this line about limiting sat fat:

> To Make America Healthy Again, we must return to the basics.

Who knows, these guidelines might indeed be sensible, but anything labeled “Make America Healthy Again” has no scientific credibility.

The dumb marketing label lowers the credibility that I'll expect to find good science in it. It in no way defines what the actual scientific credibility should be though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com