They’re still terrible.
They’re still pushing grains, low-fat dairy and protein, and seed oils. And they still think that counting calories isn’t junk science. There is no science whatsoever to justify this.
8 thoughts on “The New Dietary Guidelines”
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When in their brochure the replace the word modelling with experiment, then I’ll begin to study their results to see if they are predictive.
I recently had to go to not my regular doc about a skin infection that needed an antibiotic. After the prescription I got his lecture on diet. Turns out he’s the vegan in the Practice. I didn’t have the heart to tell him we’d run the food pyramid experiment and it was a disaster. Going low carb my wife and I have lost 10% of body mass, feel better and generally don’t get the slumps after eating, no heartburn etc etc. My regular doc and I had a laugh about this later.
My wife has been researching low carb for the last 6+ years. At this point I’d say that the people pushing the official dietary guidelines are guilty of trying to kill people and/or make them sick. They really have no evidence on their side and are willfully ignoring the evidence that they are wrong.
Which re-inforces yet again the two things I’ve learned about humans during my time on this planet:
1. Humans are very bad at correctly identifying the problem that needs to be solved.
2. Humans are very good at ignoring experimental evidence that does not conform to their prejudices.
Interesting, your post on dietary guidelines follows the Dunning-Kruger post.
The effect appears to be real and the folks publishing the guidelines appear to suffer from it.
I’ve been counting calories all year (well, since March anyway), and it’s helped me drop 35 pounds. And that’s *with* carbs as a regular part of the menu. I don’t know if it’s “junk science”, but it’s worked for me.
Go low carb, moderate protein, high fat and you will lose weight and not worry about counting carbs.
I’ve tried that. I always eat too much. Doesn’t matter how healthy the food is if one pigs out on it every day. Counting calories gives me a metric I can use more objectively than hunger to control my intake. If I rely on “fullness”, I’ll over-indulge because I eat as much for the visceral pleasure as to sate my hunger cravings.
The problem with “counting calories” is, not all calories are created equal, because the food we eat isn’t then burned in a vacuum furnace. My rule of thumb is, each fat calorie is 1x “calories”, protein 2x, non-starch veggies 3x, starchy carbos 4x. That gives you a true approximation of how it really works. And I always bring up a ground truth: you can live indefinitely on pemmican, which is 50% animal protein and 50% animal fat. The original recipe was half venison and half bear fat. Higher quality pemmican had blueberries mixed in for improved flavor.
Years ago, after a visit to a candy vending machine followed by a climb up six flights of stairs, I started to write a diet and excercise book about this, was going to be called, “I Heard the M&Ms Call My Name.” I abandoned it, but it began with this bit of doggerel:
Carbs make you fat,
Fat makes you full,
Veggies make you healthy,
Protein makes you strong.