2020 Dietary Guidelines requesting our input
This was posted on Twitter just now by Nina Teicholz (sp?)
FINALLY!!!! AT LAST!!!!!! I wonder of they really mean it this time 2020 Dietary Guidelines requests input |
Terrific News!
This "public" will most definitely be commenting. |
I hope sooooo that you are all correct. I predict "they" see all the "public" comments as addressed towards "fad" dieting, and "they" stick with the same old same old. I HOPE that I am WRONG.
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I'm working on my "public" comment right now. I noticed that there is an option to attach a file. I just printed my "1000 Days of Healthy Eating" milestone to a PDF. Hopefully they will accept that as an attachment.
Edited to add... I finished my comment and submitted it. They actually give a significant amount of space to write. Here is what I said... Quote:
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Ken, that’s an amazing letter! If I have any criticism at all it’s that you’re too kind to the food pyramid.
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Very well written, Ken.
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Oh, wow. This is great news indeed!
I wonder if they'll take comments from people overseas? I would hope so, considering the extent to which the DGAs influence the guidelines for other countries around the world. Here in NZ, your DGAs are top of our reference list as "evidence" for why ours is the way it is... |
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Let 'em have it. Give them a piece of your mind. After all, it was the US that led the way... down the road to disaster. You were a victim just as much as I. |
From MedPage:
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Just woke up and caught the end of Nina Teicholz's presentation at Low Carb Breckenridge. She mentioned a petition for change to the 2020 DGAs at https://forbetterdietaryguidelines.org/ which she encourages everyone to sign.
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As long as the guidelines are controlled by the USDA, the guidelines will favor the USDA. Let me illustrate with (probably) a hypothetical analogy. As long as transport regulations, Laws, safety standards, tax credits, research funding, etc, are controlled by petrol-powered car makers, regulations, Laws, safety standards, tax credits, research funding, etc, will favor petrol-powered car makers, as opposed to any other form of transportation like motorcycles, electric vehicles, mass transit, and so forth.
Another way to explain. How it works now Producers decide DGA - consumers consume producers' product How it should work Consumers decide DGA - producers produce accordingly The point is producers must have no say on DGA. Instead they must be made to produce according to certain standards for nutrition and health for example. One idea is to impose a quota for certain foods prescribed by DGA, maybe a % of total production. In this example, wheat producers couldn't produce more than, say, 20% of their total production as wheat. Ya, they wouldn't be wheat producers anymore, but that's the point. Also, since DGA dictates production, this production should then be funded with tax credits and grants accordingly. It's pretty much unreasonable to expect everybody (the consumers, those who would decide the DGA) to know anything about nutrition and health, but it's also reasonable to expect anybody to desire health and fitness and leanness, rather than sickness and obesity. So, to bypass this problem, it's simple enough to determine what makes us sick and fat, and what makes us healthy and lean and fit, then design the DGA accordingly, and in turn impose quotas and such on producers. Finally, the DGA cannot be monolithic as they are now, favoring a single group over all others, both from the producers side (wheat vs meat for example) and from the consumers side (low-fat diet vs low-carb diet for example). Instead, the DGA must include all possible diets (whether healthful or not, but if not, then ways to compensate like certain supplements like B12 and fat-solubles for a vegan diet for example) and provide equal support for each, so that consumers have a choice, but also have ample support to maintain that choice. In this way, diabetics type 2 for example would have a wider choice of diets, instead of the single diet prescribed by registered dieticians and nutritionists, which by the way says to eat at least 240g of carbs per day (I've seen it with my own eyes). Indeed, registered dieticians and nutritionists would have no choice but to be taught and learn about all those other diets that do not necessarily say to eat lots of carbs, like the Atkins diet or The Zone or whatever you can think of. Their curriculum would have to be revised to reflect the revised DGA, the supporting experiments that determine adequate nutrition and health, and so forth. RD's could no longer act as simple sales reps for producers - even though they don't see themselves as such, that's how it is now. OK, so I won't give them this comment or any comment in fact, you guys take what you want from this and do it yourselves. |
I prefer the "glass is half full" approach. We can debate the terrible state of nutritional awareness and related conspiracies until the cows come home. Rather, awareness of dietary health issues due to the recommendations since the late 1970s is in a much different place today due to grass roots communications and sharing the baton with an increasing number of scientific, technical, and medical experts who are adopting and promoting a new approach. Food manufacturers will fall in line when the current market for much of the processed carbage starts to dwindle. They have no choice. Yes, we can plan to see the USDA lobby and other global organizations with similar interests like the HPCSA, NHMRC promoting the dietary guidelines for Australia, FAO, and WHO who receive backing and funding from food manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies fight this trend. But they won't win in the free world. Keeping this dynamic in mind should serve to strengthen the movement toward dietary health awareness, and embolden people with the resolve to never give up the focus on achieving health through improved nutritional awareness and corresponding dietary adaptation.
Edited to add: I too have been watching Low Carb Breckenridge 2018 streaming, and the presentations are a tremendous indicator of how far nutritional awareness and practice has come over the past 5 years. This year, many physicians, nutritional scientists, and other health providers are attending. It's this trend that will continue in the coming years and makes me realize that progress is being made, day-by-day, year-by-year. |
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Unfortunately, the USDA actually controls the producers (farmers), instead of the other way around. I know this for a fact, because I come from a farming family. Dad bought a farm in the mid-60s, which at the time was all corn production. Dad switched some of the acreage to soybeans, and for a while raised some wheat too, rotating crops from one field to another to improve the soil. My brother has been farming that acreage since about 2000. My brother has eaten LC for about 20 years, so he's well aware of the problems with a grain heavy diet, just like I am. He would genuinely like to switch to some other kind of farm production, but as he's explained it to me, the USDA has the acreage of that farm designated for grain production, and nothing else can be grown there. Therefore, he is listed as a grain farmer, just as my Dad was when he bought that farm. [Coincidentally, the reason he can grow soybeans -even though they're not technically a grain - is that the USDA considers soybeans to be a grain crop, even though they're a legume. How can we possibly expect them to get nutrition right, if they can't even get the classification of crops right?] My point is that unless my brother goes through a tremendous amount of expense and red tape to get his classification and the farm's classification changed to some other type of farm production, he can't raise anything for sale, except what the USDA classifies as grain. Actually, I guess he could stop growing grain, and raise vegetables, berries, grapes, dairy cattle, chickens, etc - the USDA just wouldn't allow him to sell anything from what he would produce, unless he wants to pay heavy fines on anything he earns (the fines are so stiff they'd be higher than what he'd earn from selling any non-designated farm production). Basically, the USDA has a choke hold on farm production - the USDA designs the DGA's, and therefore they're the ones who decide what portion of total US farmland is to be devoted to each type of farm production - grains, veggies, fruit, dairy, and meat. Considering that so much of the DGAs is supposed to be grain based, obviously they have a huge amount of farmland in the US designated just for the production of various types of grains, in order to provide enough grains to meet the DGAs of every man, woman, and child in the US, plus enough extra to fulfill any trade agreements with other countries. Please don't fool yourselves into believing that farmers are the ones who actually decide what to grow, except within the strict parameters of what type of crop production the USDA has designated for their farmland. |
It's my understanding that the USDA represents producers, I mean the big producers. Small farms are imposed regulations that benefit those big producers, i.e. competition is eliminated by those regulations, it's a defacto monopoly. In essence, even though a small farm is independent, regulations make it so that it's working for the big guys. Beyond production, it's also my understanding that distribution is tightly controlled, maybe to control prices, likely by the big producers as well.
Regardless, the DGA won't change unless the underlying system changes. Rather, the DGA will change only at the whim of whoever controls them. Requesting our input? Guffaw. All of it will be ignored in the facts, even though it gives the appearance of willingness to change, if not at least to listen. The King listens too, if only to keep his subjects happy with his Kingly decrees. |
I fear that the monetary interests involved in maintaining the nutritional status quo along with issues of pride and reputation that compel so many "experts" to stick with what they've always said will derail any serious attempt to overturn the dietary guidelines. Change is going to have to come from below, grassroots, people figuring it out for themselves and acting on their own behalf, "experts" be damned. That doesn't mean I don't think people should add their comments. I just don't believe that there is any reason to expect much coming from above will change any time soon.
Jean |
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