Fortunately our various NON-plant-based WOEs seem to have the added benefit of clearing up brain-fog making thinking for oneself a whole lot easier.

More tips on what to write, with links where to post comments.

Massively important: A unique opportunity to change the US Dietary Guidelines

https://www.dietdoctor.com/massivel...tary-guidelines

https://www.nutritioncoalition.us/2...ary-guidelines/

5,000 character limit...should you have a tendency to go on as I do

This also has a link to their newsletter to learn what else can be done about the new guidelines in the future.

One thing I did last time, nominate LC experts for the DGAC...of course, that went nowhere.

"USDA and HHS will consider all public comments submitted – in relation to these criteria – in finalizing the list of topics and questions to be examined in the development of the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines. After finalizing the topics and supporting questions, USDA and HHS will post a public call for the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee nominations. The areas of expertise needed will be based on the final topics and supporting scientific questions, resulting in a coordinated and efficient scientific review."

Well, it looks like the comment battle is on. After the DD and Nutrition Coalition articles went up a wave of comments in support of low carb/saturated fat appeared today, counter balancing the onslaught of "plant based" comments the past few days. This is going to be interesting to watch. I'm seeing lots of testimonials of improved health in the comments in support of LC. Hopefully that message will get through to the decision makers. This WOE makes sick people better. I'm not seeing any real-life examples of improved health put forth in the comments pushing the vegan message.

I recall a clip where McGovern was saying something like "We don't have the luxury to wait for evidence before we do something". That was 50 years ago or something. Well, time has passed, and evidence has been uncovered, though not having had the luxury to wait that long for that much evidence to accumulate 50 years ago. Today, we certainly have the luxury to consider the last 50 years of evidence before we do something. We certainly have the luxury to choose among the best and most reliable evidence. We certainly have the luxury to admit we (in fact, not we, but they - 50 years ago, see?) were wrong in light of the obvious failure. We certainly have the luxury to try something different this time around.

We certainly have the luxury to request for input before we decide on the 2020 DGA.

Thanks for keeping an eye on this for us, Ken. I'd be following this more closely myself but I'm too busy with my own proposal right now.

I expect I'll probably submit a comment of my own in a couple of weeks once things settle down again a bit here.

Comment period runs to March 30, submit it to: https://www.regulations.gov/comment...FRDOC_0001-1803

There are quite a few comments urging low carb and higher fat now...most a 2-4 sentences, but individually answered, many with their own brief LCHF weight loss/diabetes story. The vegetarians use the cut and paste of same two sentences.

Tried to submit my long comment...full of links of course, but they do not appear as links. And did not see anyone else with links either. Someone reading could copy and place into a browser, but what a pain, so I closed my comment.
Re-thinking it all.

Comments will be printed obviously. Think of those comments as the same as comments published in a scientific journal, they all have references at the end, these references aren't links but standard IDs like PubMed uses for example. So instead of links to web pages, use standard IDs to pertinent research to support your comment. I'd go with comparative diet experiments, like the A-TO-Z study for example (doi:10.1001/jama.297.9.969 or PMID 17341711).

Bear in mind that it's hard to support health arguments with diet experiments since they're primarily done to figure out what makes us lean or fat, not what makes us healthy or sick. They still measure some health markers so you could go as far as that.

I just thought of a strategy but maybe it's too much in-your-face kinda thing. Cite studies paid by tax money, then ask why, as the case may be, they were not considered as basis to design DGA. I mean, why would tax money pay for that if we're not gonna use it for tax payers' benefit, hm?

-edit- The A-TO-Z experiment, as a for instance, was funded with lots of tax money, but as far as I'm aware has not been even mentioned in any official document wrt DGA:

ummm...some are citations (has more characters than the links) but some are lists of studies at websites, like the PHC.org list.

In their tips for commenting: "10. Agency reviewers look for sound science and reasoning in the comments they receive. When possible, support your comment with substantive data, facts, and/or expert opinions. You may also provide personal experience in your comment, as may be appropriate. By supporting your arguments well you are more likely to influence the agency decision making."

but then it appears I can't add the support (at least easily) I could make a separate file of References to attach...but I'm not submitting this for a PhD.

My first citation is from the CDC...got that the tax payer money angle there! Thanks,

https://www.regulations.gov/docs/Ti...ve_Comments.pdf

The volume of comments is really getting up there, so I've pretty much given up trying to read them all. All those "plant based" posts get a little boring -- like counting sheep. Anyway, this morning I did some key word searches just to see what the results might be. The search feature is apparently an exact word match. In other words, "carb" does not match the words "carbs" or "carbohydrates" even though they all start with "carb". Here are the results of the document counts that I found with the key words that I searched...

Total comment documents: 962

Containing the word ...

CARB: 406 documents
CARBS: 162 documents
PLANT: 214 documents
PLANTS: 215 documents
FAT: 363 documents
SATURATED: 88 documents
DIABETES: 254
OBESITY: 263
VEGAN: 28 documents
VEGETARIAN: 19 documents
ATKINS: 64 documents
KETO: 16 documents
KETOGENIC: 35 documents

I realize that some of these words might appear in anyone's comment, whether it is pro LC or not. But given the wording in the standard "plant based" message, it looks to me like pro LCHF/Saturated Fat comments are having a good showing. At the very least, using the key word search makes it easier to keep up on the carb related responses, which is really all that I'm interested in.

We are now experiencing the equivalent of an election campaign.

Keep in mind that you can upload and attach up to 10 documents in addition to the comment box area provided. I printed my success story and 1000 days of healthy eating to PDF files and attached them to my submission along with 3 photos. By printing to a file my PDF lost any ability to have a clickable link. But if you put your comments into an MS Word document and save it to a PDF then the links will be clickable. At least they are in my MS Office 2013 version of MS Word.

Regardless of your position on the guidelines, I applaud anyone who takes the time to participate, but the skeptic in me questions weather comments will actually influence the results. To take it a step further, I am not sure I would want the guidelines to based on comments, and hope that they take an objective look at the science. I am curious how open they are with the decision making process.

I sucked it up yesterday and moved the links into a separate document of references, and added titles and citations if a study. Good thing have the time and it was snowing anyway

At this first phase they are only seeking what issues the public sees as important. https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/dietary-guidelines The issues may inform their choices for the Science Committee. They may finally have a low carb researcher on that (I can recycle the nomination made five years ago )
Unlikely anyone would bother to read references now but they will be there in an attachment. Most comments are brief story about how LC helped someone lose weight or regain health, or eating saturated fats improved tests...it does not have to be elaborate.

I agree that the DGAs should not be changed on the basis of comments. But I also do not think that that's what we're advocating here.

Surely, laypersons who offer "only" anecdotal accounts of healing with LCHF can hope that the sheer volume of such accounts will persuade those who will be making the final decisions (those who may be, by training or peer pressure among their colleagues, biased against this way of eating and so automatically ignoring/discounting the scientific evidence) to take a second look at that evidence.

Our role is to get them to take that second look, form the question "wait, why are we getting all of these accounts? how did this happen?" and open their minds a little with a sense of genuine inquiry.

Then, with that second examination of the evidence put forth by such brilliant minds and careful researchers as ___(you know who they are, fill in the blank) at least SOME will be convinced by the facts.

Eventually LCHF will get the majority on the weight of that evidence alone. If not this time around then... But hopefully this time around. The sooner we get the DGAs changed, the sooner lives will be saved. So let's beat this drum loudly, LCHF-ers.