New Federal Dietary Guidelines Somewhat Less Idiotic Than The Previous Versions

Do you think that the U.S. federal government might be a good place to seek reasonable guidance on matters involving science?  If so, I question your sanity.  In recent years the part of the federal enterprise masquerading as “science” has suffered one debacle after another resulting from acceptance and promotion of pseudoscience, examples being Covid lockdowns and school closures, let alone the entire catastrophic climate change fiasco.  Do you remember the CDC ordering (on no authority) a nationwide eviction moratorium (until struck down by the Supreme Court)?  

And of course, the acceptance of pseudoscience by a federal bureaucracy is somehow inevitably associated with an effort by that bureaucracy to increase its budget and enhance its power to order the American people around.

In the area of federal claims based on dubious scientific authority, the Dietary Guidelines emanating from the Department of Agriculture are a prominent instance, although perhaps relatively benign.  The Guidelines are relatively benign because, for the most part, they are not mandatory.  However, their influence is pervasive.  If you doubt that assertion, try walking a supermarket aisle and counting up the number of items making claims of “low fat” or “heart healthy” based on information from the Guidelines.  Also, the Dietary Guidelines are mandatory for things funded by the federal government, like school lunches.

USDA’s Dietary Guidelines got their start back in 1980, and have since been updated every five years.  If they have been known for one thing above all others, it has been their recommendation to limit the amount of fats in the diet, and in particular to limit the amount of what are called “saturated” fats (the kind generally found in meat and dairy products).  The basis for these recommendations in particular has always been weak to non-existent.  

Back in 2014 a food and nutrition writer named Nina Teicholz took on the scientific claims about dietary fats being unhealthy in a book titled “The Big Fat Surprise.”   Teicholz argued persuasively that the case for lowering the amount of fats in the diet had never been established.  I wrote a review of “The Big Fat Surprise” in this post from January 2016.  That is now 10 years ago.  In the intervening decade, nothing much changed.