
The 2015 US Dietary Guidelines: Lifting the Ban on Total Dietary Fat - brown-dragon
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2338262
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personjerry
So, supposedly these guidelines looked out for your health, but given that so
many of their "findings" have been overturned, then they've basically been
giving advice that actually hindered peoples' health, and so one might
understand that they've actually been harmful!

This might lead one to question the validity of other government suggestions.
Or even policies. Maybe that's too far. Nonetheless, I think this raises
serious questions as to how much faith we can put even into the government,
even their "scientific" findings.

~~~
HaloZero
I'm sorry, but welcome to science. Theories evolve, new things are discovered,
we make appropriate changes.

If the government stubbornly held onto their previous policies then they would
be open to criticism, but the fact that things are changing is a good thing.

Nutritional science is hard, our bodies are complex.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
You get enough bad ideas hiding under the aegis of "science." Some guys claim
something and pretend to be more sure about it than they've right to be. Dress
it up as a scientific theory and you're personally unassailable.

I happen to think the data did and still does support restricting total fat.
Highly saturated fats are mostly benign, but many fatty foods also have
substantial quantities of unsaturated fats that are clearly linked to health
consequences. So in practice "take easy on the fatty foods" has always been
not bad for blanket general advice. They are probably making a mistake with
this revision.

~~~
adwn
> _Highly saturated fats are mostly benign, but many fatty foods also have
> substantial quantities of unsaturated fats that are clearly linked to health
> consequences._

I thought it was the _saturated_ fats that are unhealthy, and the
_unsaturated_ fats that are benign and even essential up to some amount daily?

~~~
GordonS
It's complicated :)

I've been reading a lot of papers on this subject recently, and it seems there
is a complex interplay between intake of carbohydrate, saturated fat,
polyunsaturated fat and monounsaturated fat.

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shanev
As someone who's been paleo for over 6 years, this makes me very happy. I
believe the paleo community had a lot to do with raising awareness of
beneficial fats, promoting pasture-raised meat, and coconut oil and butter
over industrial seed oils like canola.

~~~
DiabloD3
Thanks to Paleo, I went from 340 pounds to 214 in exactly one year, and I'm
now down to 190. People who've been part of Paleo already know the FDA avoids
science as long as possible as not to piss off large Congressional lobbying
groups.

I expect to get downvoted, and honestly, I don't care. Downvoting doesn't
change the fact I lost all this weight by purposely ignoring the FDA's
recommendations.

~~~
Laforet
Notwithstanding the "fat-free everything" fad, the best epidermiological data
we have so far suggest that fat consumption is highly correlated with coronary
heart disease and all sorts of late-life complications. This could be wrong or
out-dated, but FDA is only acting on the mainsteam scientific opinion that fat
should be limited in a typical diet.

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/o/cochrane/clcentral/articles...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/o/cochrane/clcentral/articles/216/CN-00133216/frame.html)

USDA, on the other hand, has been deeply troubled by the public's distaste of
fat as they have an obligation is keep dairy farmers afloat. To this day they
have been trying all sorts of things to promote fat consumption without much
thought to the health consequences. South Park touched on the subject in the
episode "Gluten Free Ebola", but I guess most people missed that point. New
York Times have done a good article explaining the economic and politics
between the FDA-USDA feud.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/us/07fat.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/us/07fat.html)

Finally, one must note that individual idiosyncracies play a major role in how
we respond to external inputs such as diets, exercise and medication. I am
glad that paleo diet worked out for you, however please bear in mind that it
may and may not work for everyone when you push it.

~~~
raverbashing
As from the article quoted: "dietary intake at total and saturated fat"

I wanted to see a study comparing the average fat intake of Paleo
practitioners with the target of that study.

Oh by the way, trans fats are poly-insaturated (good for you! - and sold as
such). Until it wasn't.

~~~
shanev
I'd love to see a study like that as well. And you're right, not all trans
fats are bad. There’s a good trans-fat called conjugated linoleic acid (CLA)
that is mainly found in meat and dairy from pastured ruminants. Grass-fed
cattle produce 500% more CLA than grain-fed [2]. Only man-made industrial
trans-fats are bad.

[1]: [http://chriskresser.com/can-some-trans-fats-be-
healthy](http://chriskresser.com/can-some-trans-fats-be-healthy)

[2]:
[http://www.journalofanimalscience.org/content/78/11/2849.ful...](http://www.journalofanimalscience.org/content/78/11/2849.full.pdf)

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kazinator
> _In the new DGAC report, one widely noticed revision was the elimination of
> dietary cholesterol as a "nutrient of concern". This surprised the public
> [...]_

Not any public that hasn't had its head up its ass with no internet access
therein for the past decade or two.

~~~
stormbrew
Unfortunately, unless you define "head up your ass" as "listening to any other
people, including probably your doctor," this is definitely not true. Most
otherwise rational and well informed people still seem to be under the
impression that all fat is bad.

~~~
avz
Never met any such rational and well informed people. How could _all fat_
possibly be bad? Cellular and organellar membranes all over the human body
(and any other organism on this planet) are built from fat [1].

These membranes conduct neural signals, release and respond to hormones,
participate in immune response and facilitate all types of metabolism by
enabling cell and organellum compartmentalization.

Some of the fatty acids necessary for these functions are not even produced by
the human body [2] and therefore must be ingested.

I think the real question people ask is not about whether fat is bad or not,
but about the benefits and risks of relative proportions of fat and other
nutrients.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_membrane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_membrane)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_fatty_acid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_fatty_acid)

~~~
kazinator
stormbrew did say " _otherwise_ rational and well-informed". I.e. not rational
or informed in this particular matter.

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tsigo
Still no recommended daily allowance for sugar, huh?

~~~
bobbles
Current WHO guidelines state 6 teaspoons a day total sugar intake for the
highest level of health benefits. Really wish food regulatory organisations
like this would start actually taking note of that

~~~
lucaspiller
That equates to 24g (1tsp of sugar is 4g) or around the same as in a can of
Coke. That seems very low, is the sugar overuse that bad?

~~~
zzleeper
Note that a few papers (forgot the link) found that naturally occuring sugar
is fine. (I ate a banana and two oranges today and that's already above 24g of
sugar, so I got worried and went to do some research..)

~~~
roel_v
It's not that you can eat as much sugar as you want as long as it's not
refined. For example, after your fruit consumption, you should have brushed
your teeth (according to 'the guidelines'). The thing is that 50 grams of
sugar is just really, really low...

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tantalor
What does "lifting the ban" mean? What is currently banned?

~~~
Laforet
Currently the recommendation is that fat should not exceed 35% of total
calorific intake. And the proposal seeks to do away with the cap.

Edit: added some clarifications

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tantalor
I don't see how that is a ban.

~~~
GordonS
OK, it might not be a 'ban' in strict grammatical terms, but the implication
is clear. Because of these guidelines many people have treated any dietary fat
as taboo. I certainly counted myself among them. Decades of advice and ad
campaigns from the government will do that.

I believe these guidelines and associated ad campaigns (and many like them in
other countries such as the UK) have actually led to people 'learning' to find
fat completely distasteful, so I think it will be some time before there is a
significant change in eating habits.

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kazinator
Yes, you have to limit total fat, because it contains calories. You can only
have so many calories. Therefore, by inescapable reasoning, there must exist a
limit on total dietary fat for everyone. (Moreover, that limit cannot be 100%
of your caloric intake, because 100% caloric intake from fat constitutes
malnutrition.)

