Like the author I have my reservations about the USDA guidelines, but can we really blame the obesity epidemic on them? After all - how many people even remotely follow those guidelines?
Yes, I think we can. Fifty years of the guidelines, even if not always followed, form the cultural and psychological and healthcare baseline for healthy eating. And they're completely wrong – that's the author's well-documented claim, and I believe it.
E.g. look at all the fruit juice and sweet cereals and "low-fat" items on any supermarket shelf. Sells $$$billions each year - I just checked. Low-fat is very unhealthy compared to full-fat, and in the current obesity and diabetes epidemic, fruit juice and sugary cereals are just plain poison.
Its fairly well known how these things generally happen in a bureaucracy.
One word, corruption.
Its been known that starting in 1976 PFAS were first found in human blood, and it was rediscovered a second time in the 1990s (at 3M).
Obesity has increased dramatically starting in that same time frame. No mention of PFAS causing toxicological issues related to obesity, or inflammation, and when you ask the wrong questions (is it diet, or is it toxic exposure), and doctors aren't testing for the latter, of course there is going to be a quagmire of bad data in the catchall statistics.
It is important to note that there are thousands of variations in PFAS chemicals, which can make them hard to study. But the research conducted to date reveals possible links between human exposures to certain PFAS and some adverse health outcomes. These health effects include:
Altered metabolism and body weight regulation, and risk of childhood obesity.
Increased risk of some cancers.
Reduced ability of the immune system to fight infections."
