The ACTUAL Dietary Guidelines

Here's a pop-quiz:

1.  When were the first official Dietary Guidelines released to the American public?

2.  When did the Dietary Guidelines first include the specific recommendation to cut overall dietary fat to 30% of total calories, and saturated fat to 10%?

GRATUITOUS SPACER IMAGES 

As participants and attendees at the #LCHF 2015 "Summit" in Cape Town, South Africa noshed on gourmet fare such as filet mignon and duck confit, the group's sight-seeing trip took them to the paleo side of town where the "nose-to-tail" stuff is sold out in the open.  

  "THIS IS NOT THE KIND OF MEAT WE ADVOCATE FOR"  

  ~ Jimmy Moore  

No Big Surprise ... A Compendium of Errata Etc. from The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz

After reading the new book  The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet by Ninary Taueicholz more throroughly, I became rather frustrated.  How does a book that contains so many glaring errors even make it into print?  This book is being promoted as discussing how scientists got everything all wrong, one in particular.  It discusses nutritional science and recommendations gone wrong.  It firmly places the blame for obesity on advice to reduce dietary fat.  In doing so, however, Teicholz commits far more egregious errors than any she would like you to believe have occurred.  So I'll do a revolving post, adding them in here as the mood strikes, rather than clutter the blog with tons of posts.   My hope is that this post doesn't end up to be of epic length, and that this book turns out to be a flash in the pan that fades quickly from memory.    Each new entry will bump the post and be at the top with previous entries to follow, most recent first.  They will be separated by a horizontal line and each section dated with a *** preceding it that you may search on that string in your browser to scan for others.  

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*** 2/27/2015

Americans Have Reduced Fat Intake From 43% to 33%

In the Introduction, Teicholz makes the following claim:

Unaware of the flimsy scientific scaffolding upon which their dietary guidelines rest, Americans have dutifully attempted to follow them.  Since the 1970s, we have successfully increased our fruits and vegetables by 17 percent, our grains by 29 percent, and reduced the amount of fat we eat from 43 percent to 33 percent of calories or less.

Nina Teicholz "Corrects" The Big Fat Surprise ~ Digs Hole Deeper

TO SUM IT UP WITH AN IMAGE

UPDATE!!!  I've found a genuine, real-life, actual error in Teicholz's book.  She spelled the author's name incorrectly in her notes.

Some Meaty Math

Nina Teicholz is fond of portraying the modern American diet as "near-vegetarian", and that we need to "return" to our meat eating ways of a century ago.  But even her most exaggerated statistic lists meat intake at 200 lbs per year.  

[200 lbs/year]  * [16 ounces/lb] ÷ [365 days/year] = 8.77 ounces/day 

or 0.55 pounds or 250 grams of meat per day

Now to pick a fatty meat ... Prime Rib

This works out to just under 800 fat calories and just over 200 protein calories, roughly 75% fat, 25% protein. 

Now you have around 1000 of your daily calories.  What else was on the plate to provide the additional 1000 to 1500 or 2000 if the men from the Minnesota Starvation Study intakes are used for reference?

Nutritional Content of Some Specialty/Organ Meats

I have long been troubled by the "they ate nose to tail", and all of the fatty organs.  By FAR, the most common organ mentioned is the liver.  Ahem.  The liver is not supposed to be fatty, and I don't think these people are really so hypocritical as to eat foie gras and claim that's what they mean.  Well ....

As the fauxtrage over the not-yet-released 2015 Dietary Guidelines rages on over on Marion Nestle's blog, George carries the fatty offal flag in to blame American health issues on our Orwellian fear of the fat in organ meats ... at the hands of the DGAC.  Yeah, if by that he means we've been avoiding tongue, tripe and brains (classic American fare!), I guess he has a point.  Actually, as you'll see, many of these meet the DGAC's definition of "lean" (< 10 grams per 100 grams weight), but are not "low fat" by percentage.   

So just a little sampling of some specialty/organ meats.  You can click, resize in browser, and the URLs for nutritiondata.com are included.

Nina Teicholz Distorts the Facts Again

So in No Big Surprise fashion, Nina Teicholz, is back at it again, this time in the New York Times with an editorial.  It's bad enough that she has mangled past history, and the science, beyond recognition, but this time she is distorting (one might justifiably use a stronger word such as LIE at this point) current events.  

The Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee is out.   (It is important to realize that these are not the actual guidelines, but the DGAC report, the official guidelines will not be issued by the USDA and HHS until sometime later this year if not early next).

Who did the NYT tap to comment?   Someone with ANY knowledge of nutritional science?  No.  Nina Teicholz.  Seriously, Gray Lady.  This was clearly commissioned in advance, you couldn't do any better for your readers?  Is business that bad?  I guess so.  

The Government's Bad Dietary Advice by Nina Teicholz

Let's start with the big fat lie, and I've included some additional commentary from my original post at the end here.  After lamenting that nobody listened to Pete Ahrens, the Cassandra of his day, she writes:

Today, we are poised to make the same mistakes. The committee’s new report also advised eliminating “lean meat” from the list of recommended healthy foods, as well as cutting back on red and processed meats. Fewer protein choices will likely encourage Americans to eat even more carbs. It will also have policy implications: Meat could be limited in school lunches and other federal food programs.

More on the Mechanisms of the Glycemic Index: A Fatty Acid Roller Coaster?

A Continuation of The Mechanisms of the Glycemic Index: A Fatty Acid Roller Coaster? ....

Quick summary of Ludwig's mechanism for high-GI making us fat v. 2002:

High GI carb causes glucose and insulin to spike and fatty acids to plummet early on.  Then glucose plummets resulting in hypoglycemia and counterregulatory hormones kick in.  These bring glucose back or slightly elevated and cause fatty acid levels to rebound to levels reminiscent of a long fast making the person hungry (hypoglycemia) and hungrier (feeling fasted) so they eat more.    

The Mechanism of High-GI ~ 2012

by Davis S. Ludwig

In 2012, with colleague (often listed as a co-lead investigator) Cara Ebbeling and others, Ludwig published:  Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance.  In JAMA.  I only mention this study here for two reasons.  First, to demonstrate that the 2002 review paper was not by then forgotten.  Second, as will be discussed towards the end of this post, the mechanism changed despite similar results that should have lead an unbiased researcher in a different direction ... or at least caused him or her pause.  From the paper:

Fatty Acid Contents of Some Fats: Avocado, Coconut, Olive, Walnut, Butter, Lard, Beef Tallow, Salmon, Seal

Almost all of these are for 100 grams fat.  For comparison only.  Click on image and resize in browser.  Compiled from nutritiondata.com.

Ancel Keys ~ It's Time to Appreciate a Real Researcher ...

... or at least stop lying about him and promoting bad research reviews.

Around a year ago, a "commissioned and internally peer reviewed" Editorial appeared in the British Medical Journal's off-shoot Open Heart online journal.   The author, James J DiNicolantonio is identified as a Cardiovascular research scientist and PharmD, and he is also an Associate Editor of the journal.   

 

The Circulating "Food" Supply and The Failed Internal Starvation Hypothesis

There are several recurring themes, mostly from low carb advocates of the "fat burning is best" bent, that keep ... well ... recurring!  Perhaps foremost among these is this concept of "internal starvation".  From Gary Taubes in Good Calories, Bad Calories:  

"For the past century, the conspicuous alternative to the positive-caloric-balance hypothesis has always been, as Pennington, Astwood, and Hilde Bruch suggested, that obesity is caused by a defect in the regulation of fat metabolism. At the risk of repetition, it is important to say this is, by definition, a disorder of fat accumulation, not a disorder of overeating. For whatever reason , the release of fat or its combustion is impeded, or the deposition or synthesis of fat is promoted, as Astwood said, and the result is obesity. That in turn will cause a deficit of calories elsewhere in the body— Astwood’s “internal starvation”— and thus a compensatory hunger and sedentary behavior.