Agricultural News
Federal Government Should Remove Limit on Saturated Fats in 2020 Dietary Guidelines
Wed, 11 Mar 2020 14:32:26 CDT
Today the Nutrition Coalition, a group that aims to bring rigorous science to nutrition policy, is urging the federal government to reconsider the current limits on saturated fat intake recommended in our nation's federal nutrition policy, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), ahead of the final meeting of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC).
The DGAC, an expert group appointed every five years to review the science for the government's nutrition policy and make recommendations to the U.S. Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS), meets for the last time this week, before the release of 2020 Dietary Guidelines scientific report in early May.
Last month a group of leading nutrition scientists, including three former members of previous Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committees, including the Chair of the 2005 committee, released a groundbreaking consensus statement challenging current DGA recommendations that limit consumption of saturated fats to 10% of energy. This group of 11 prominent scientists agreed that the most rigorous and current science fails to support a continuation of this policy.
"Americans deserve nutrition recommendations based on the most current and rigorous science available, which includes these new groundbreaking findings reversing years of traditional thinking on the health effects of saturated fats," said Nina Teicholz, Executive Director of The Nutrition Coalition. "Before the advisory committee releases its scientific report, we urge the committee to critically review the most up-to-date evidence on saturated fats and modify their conclusions accordingly. With rates of diet-related diseases continuing to climb, it's more important than ever that the dietary guidelines be trustworthy, reliable and based on the most up-to-date science-which now indicates that continued caps on saturated fats are not warranted."
Members of the group of scientists also sent a letter regarding their findings to the Secretaries of USDA and HHS. The letter urged USDA-HHS to give "serious and immediate consideration to lifting the limits placed on saturated fat intake for the upcoming 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans."
The scientists wrote, "The effect of these fats on health cannot be considered in isolation but instead must be analyzed as part of the larger food matrix in which these fats exist. It is now known that the impact of nutrients on health needs to be considered in the context of the overall diet, the type and degree of food processing that a food undergoes, and other crucial factors such as a person's metabolic health and propensity for disease. For example, some foods, such as dark chocolate, whole-fat dairy, and unprocessed meat, have a relatively high saturated-fat content but show no association with increased cardiovascular risk."
The federal government has published the Dietary Guidelines-the principal policy guiding diet in the United States-with the goals of promoting good health, helping Americans reach a healthy weight, and preventing chronic disease. However, since the launch of the DGA in 1980, the rates of chronic, diet-related diseases, including diabetes, dementia, obesity and heart disease in America have dramatically increased.
For more information, please visit www.nutritioncoalition.us.
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