A Snarky Rant on Sodium and Blood Pressure

Quick rant today, related to my recent obsession with all things blood pressure (see here and here).  I just found this quote on the CDC website that really steamed my clams...

"Sodium intake from processed and restaurant foods contributes to increased rates of high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke. Decreasing sodium intake to within recommended limits could prevent thousands of deaths annually, because nearly 400,000 deaths each year are attributed to high blood pressure." (1)

To me this is short-sighted, oversimplified, and quite frankly ignorant. Sodium reduction can be a good thing because it often occurs simultaneously with elimination of processed junk, like said "processed and restaurant food". But being all narrow-minded and reducing sodium intake to the level they recommend can be dangerous (2, 3).

The Problem With Salt Restriction

Every once in a while, you read something that just restores your faith in humanity. For me, a recent article in the New York Times did just that. Entitled "No Benefit Seen in Sharp Limits on Salt in Diet", the article makes the case that the latest sodium recommendations are too low, and that reducing sodium intake to such low levels could be dangerous.

Amen. It's about damn time. The newest sodium guidelines are ridiculously, stupidly, just absurdly low. How absurdly low you ask? The 2010 Dietary Guidelines set the upper limit at 2300 mg per day for healthy individuals, about one teaspoon of salt, and 1500 mg for those with hypertension or cardiovascular disease. Even more extreme, the American Heart Association feels that EVERYONE should shoot for 1500 mg. 

Maybe you don't know how low that is; if you've never tracked your sodium intake or read a food label then maybe you can't quite grasp it. So let me put it to you this way... the guidelines are so low, one study reports that only 0.12% of the population is eating a diet that meets the standards (1). That's 1 in every 833 of us! The average American eats about 3700 mg of sodium per day and has for the past 50 years (2). And our salt intake may have been even higher than that in the past (3). Hmm I wonder how we've all survived this long as a species when we're so blatantly overconsuming salt!?

Nope, these new recommendations just never made sense to me. But regardless of whether the guidelines are attainable, this New York Times article makes the case that a sodium intake that low can be downright dangerous. Interesting eh?? I thought so. So interesting that I spent the majority of my day at my food service rotation looking into it.

Why Your Growing Child Needs to Eat More Fat

The low-fat craze of the 90's just won't die.  I thought we were past low-fat at this point, yet every time I go to the grocery store I'm still bombarded with the fat-free message.  It's worse at Whole Foods, my place of employment. We even have a whole line of "healthy" fat-free salad dressings at our salad bar. And in my current school lunch rotation (part of the joyful road to becoming an RD), fat is being pulled from the menu like never before in favor of whole grains, vegetables, and skim milk.  New York City schools have gone as far to ban butter (!?!?). For the average consumer, the message is loud and clear: fat is bad, mmmkay? We've gotta eat more vegetables! Eat your broccoli, eat your salad! Throw out the butter and oil! Fat's killing the kids!

But there's a problem with that. A big one. Of course vegetables are full of nutrients, but eating them without fat renders their fat-soluble vitamins (mainly vitamin A) useless. And you do NOT want that, especially if you're a little cherub in the 1st grade. Read on now, ya hear?

New Study: Replacing Animal Fat with Vegetable Oil = Death

Ahhh it was a good day today when I read this article... "Study raises questions about dietary fats and heart disease guidance".  Here's the scoop... researchers from the United States and Australia have recovered missing data from an old study from the 1970s.  The study, known as the Sydney Diet Heart Study, was a randomized controlled trial in which the participants were told to replace the saturated fats in their diets with polyunsaturated fats from vegetable oil.  The 458 subjects were all men between ages 30-59 who had recently had a coronary event, defined as either a heart attack or angina (1). 

Why was this data missing?  Who knows.  I can't find a good answer.  But had these results been available in the mid 1970s as they should have been, it may have changed the course of the dietary guidelines on fat intake.

Okay so we had two groups, both groups are coming off of either a heart attack or angina.  Let me break it down right quick...

Group 1:  Control group

• Given no dietary advice at all

Group 2:  Intervention group, given the following instructions...

• Reduce dietary saturated fat (animal fats) to under 10% of calories
• Reduce dietary cholesterol to less than 300 mg/day
• Increase polyunsaturated fats (from safflower oil) to 15% of calories

Upcoming Video Presentation and Q&A

What's up y'all??  Just a quick announcement for my 3 readers (Mom, Mom, and Mom)... I've been busy the past few weeks preparing a video presentation entitled "How the Government's Nutrition Advice is Making Us Fat and Sick", which will be presented in Bellingham, Washington on Wednesday, January 30th for the Western Libertarians club at Western Washington University.  That's a lot of proper nouns.  Be sure to read that sentence again to make sure you got it all.  Anyway, my video will be presented at the club meeting on the 30th and there will be a live Q & A session with me via Skype.  The meeting starts at 4:00 pm pacific time, so 7:00 pm eastern time.  So if anyone out there lives in the Bellingham area, I encourage you to go and check it out.  You'll learn all about the Paleo diet, the history of food and nutrition, and how we got to where we are today... and of course, what's wrong with this...

...and what you should be eating instead!

Here's a link to the Facebook event if anybody needs any more details!  http://www.facebook.com/events/192811674197425/ 

And I hope to see you there!  I mean not literally there, because I won't physically be there, but I hope to see you through my computer screen from 3000 miles away.  Be there!

5 Misleading Health Claims

The grocery store is a dangerous place.  It's a constant battle between you and the the big food companies, constantly throwing their health claims at you, hoping to reel you in like a Largemouth Bass.  The truth is, there's very little truth to what they say.  Here are 5 of the most common misleading claims...


1.  "0 Grams Trans Fat"
A few years back, the FDA decided to crack down on the amount of trans fat in the food supply, since it's just about the worst thing you can ever put in your body.  Trans fat, for those of you who don't know, is created by the chemical process of hydrogenation, which turns liquid oils into solid fats (think vegetable oil into Crisco).  It was (and still is, to some extent) common in a lot of processed foods, especially baked goods.

Recently, the FDA added trans fat to the nutrition label, so that consumers could easily see if a product contained trans fat.  Unfortunately, they also created the term "0 grams trans fat", in which "Zero" doesn't mean zero at all, and instead means "less than 0.5 grams per serving".  So if you were a food manufacturer, what would you do??  Obviously reduce the serving size until the amount of trans fat per serving drops below 0.5 grams.  Nice little trick!  In many cases though, the regulation has forced manufacturers to replace hydrogenated oils with other fats or other ingredients.  Probably a good thing.

But still, zero doesn't mean zero.  If you see "0 grams trans fat" on the label, there's a good chance that product actually does contain trans fat (ironic isn't it?)  Check the ingredient list.  If you see "hydrogenated oil" anywhere in that list, you're eating trans fat.  Put it back on the shelf.

Why You Don't Need Grains

Alright folks, it's time for another rant.  Something's gotten me really fired up lately.  Now I don't want to mention any names... but let's just say that there are a lot of people out there who are really attached to grains.  I mean, grains do make up over 1/4 of My Plate.  They're a major part of nearly everyone's diet: pasta, rice, bread, corn... there's no question that these foods make up the bulk of the American diet.  But does that mean they're good for us?  No.  Just because everyone eats them doesn't make them healthy.  If you look at the history of the human diet, and read this Jared Diamond article, you'll learn that adopting agriculture and grains as a major part of the human diet may have been "the worst mistake in the history of the human race."  That's a pretty grand statement, but there's no debating the huge decline in human health that followed the agricultural revolution.  It's very clear that when we as a species decided to adopt agriculture and make grains a part of our diet, we traded health for the ability to support a larger population.  So I ask you again... just because everyone eats grains, does that make them good for us?  NO!

The Ridiculousness of the Diabetes Diet

Well, now that the spring semester at UConn is in full swing, and I'm frequently busy spreading the word that skim milk is the dietary solution to everything, I haven't had time to blog much.  And I definitely haven't had time to put together any type of science-intensive post.  But I've had this one on the brain for a while now, and I think it's time to put it to paper.  Or virtual paper.  And this one really fires me up.  Begin rant...

So last semester in my Medical Nutrition Therapy class, we discussed type 2 diabetes extensively.  That's the type that's acquired later in life because of a shitty diet, not the type that you get when you're younger and require insulin injections.  Type 2 diabetes used to be called "Adult-Onset Diabetes", until it started showing up in younger people, and that name sort of went out the window.  I'd rather they kept the name though; it'd be pretty embarrassing to be a 12-year-old and have adult-onset diabetes wouldn't it?  Maybe that would have helped stress to those kids just how god-awful it is that they have diabetes at such a young age.  But that's neither here nor there.

What I want to talk about today is the standard diabetes diet the conventional wisdom folks recommend.  In case you didn't know, diabetes is a disorder of carbohydrate metabolism.  When you're diabetic, your body stops responding to insulin, the hormone that normally gets those carbs into your cells so they can be used for energy.  Well diabetics can't process those carbs so well.  As a result, the glucose just hangs out in the bloodstream, and high blood glucose is extremely toxic.  Given the fact that diabetics have to deal with this carbohydrate metabolism issue, it would seem to follow that they should reduce their carbohydrate consumption, right?  Nope.  Not according to the conventional wisdom.  In fact, the standard diabetes diet doesn't reduce carb consumption at all, and in some cases it may even suggest more carbs; they simply recommend that you spread your carb intake evenly throughout the day.  Doesn't make any sense does it??  But why on earth would any sane person not recommend a low-carb diet for diabetics?  Answer:  because if you eat fewer carbs, you have to eat more fat and protein.  And increasing your fat would give you heart disease, something that diabetics are at much higher risk for.

The Diabetes Diet:  eat more bread

Historical Context, Part 6 - The Obesity Epidemic

As I've talked about in previous posts, the government began making dietary recommendations in 1977, beginning with Senator George McGovern's Dietary Goals for the United States.  The torch was then passed to the USDA in 1980, which began drafting dietary recommendations every five years.  The most recent USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans came out at the end of 2010.  For all intents and purposes, the recommendations have changed very little since 1977.  Let's look at some of the specifics of the government's advice here, and we'll see if Americans have been following it over the past few decades.  First on the list, avoid foods high in saturated fat.  This includes eggs (which everyone has been afraid of since that Time magazine article), red meat, and full-fat dairy.  And when you cut something out of your diet, you have to replace it with something else, right?  The government advised that we eat more starches, grains, and vegetable oils in the place of these high-saturated fat foods, along with more low-fat meats like chicken and fish.  Well, it turns out that Americans have been following this advice. Here are a few graphs showing the recent dietary trends:

Since the 1970's, we have done exactly what was recommended for us to do.  We've eaten fewer eggs, and keep in mind also that the egg data does not take into account the countless yolks that are thrown away for fear of their artery-clogging capabilities.  Until recently, an egg white omelet was a stupid idea, and rightfully so; it tastes awful.  We've reduced red meat consumption and replaced it with chicken and fish.  Red meat has become a poster boy for our health problems, but its consumption has declined as Americans' health has deteriorated over the past few decades.  Whole milk consumption has declined immensely.  Americans drink only about 1/3 of the whole milk that they did in 1970.  It appears as though most Americans have switched over to low-fat or fat-free milk, which have both increased dramatically over the same time period.  And then we come to grains, flour, sugar, and vegetable oil.  All three of these have been on the rise in the American diet over the past few decades.  Remember, the Dietary Guidelines recommended that we increase our grain consumption, and we did just that.  Unfortunately, in our attempt to avoid animal fat, we also consumed more sugar.  Sugar was something that was not stressed in the early Dietary Guidelines, but more recently the USDA has begun to recommend reducing sugar intake.  As for vegetable oil, I could not find a graph showing its consumption, but since it didn't exist before the mid 20th century and now it's considered an essential cooking item, it's safe to assume its consumption has increased exponentially. 

So... we followed the advice that was provided to us.  We ate less red meat and saturated-fat-laden foods.  We ate more grains and flour products.  We chose low-fat protein sources like skim milk and chicken breast, and we cooked with vegetable oils.  Well, here's what happened:

Obesity gone wild.   The first graph is from 1985, which was the first year obesity statistics by state were recorded.  In 1985, no state had an obesity rate over 14%.  Actually, data wasn't available for every state, but West Virginia, which has the highest obesity rate today, was under 14% in 1985, so chances are that was just about the highest in the country.  In 2009, only Colorado had an obesity rate under 19%, and there were 9 states with an obesity rate over 30%.  You could say, based on these numbers, that the obesity rate in America has approximately doubled since 1985, maybe even more than doubled.

But don't say it's because we're eating too much red meat and saturated fat, because we aren't.  Grains, sugar, and other carbohydrates are the foods that have been on the rise in America during this period in which obesity took off.  Besides, we have been eating red meat and saturated-fat-containing foods for millions of years.  The obesity epidemic, and the heart disease epidemic for that matter, only began in the 20th century.  As Sean Croxton of Underground Wellness always says, you can't blame new diseases on old foods.  I agree completely.  The culprits here are not red meat and eggs.  It is our overconsumption of grains, flour, sugar, and vegetable oils that is at the core of our health problems.

But what about the heart disease epidemic?  Did the recent dietary change prevent heart attacks?  It actually may have.  Heart disease rates have leveled off since the mid 1970's (see graph below).  Of course, there are other factors involved here, like the fact that everyone and their mother is on statin drugs, which may help prevent heart disease.  I'm not sold on statins at all, but there is some evidence that it's probably helping a few people prevent heart disease deaths.  It is important to note, though, that we are only talking about heart disease deaths.  Is a diet that can reduce your risk for heart disease, but increase your waistline and make your more susceptible to cancer, really the ideal diet?  I don't think so....

Now here we are in 2011.  The newest Dietary Guidelines have just been released, and we've still got a food pyramid that is based on a nutrient-poor food (grains) that hasn't been consumed for 99% of human history.  But what else is our government to do?  We as humans made a decision 10,000 years ago to commit to a grain-based diet when we adopted agriculture as our means for food production.  We sacrificed our health in return for the ability to support a greater population.  As a result, our modern government is obligated to support a diet that can feed the ever-increasing population; a diet based on grains that are high in calories and can be mass-produced fairly easily and inexpensively.  The USDA Dietary Guidelines will NEVER adopt a lower carb Paleo Diet mindset, regardless of how clear the science is.  Firstly, such a stark change in ideals would admit that they've been wrong for the past three decades.  Secondly, it would ruin the agricultural industry.  Thirdly, eating an optimal human diet is just not possible for everyone to do with our current population.  Like I said, we made the decision to eat a grain-based diet when we decided to adopt agriculture. 

So, to conclude this six-part Historical Context series, THIS is why I reject the low-fat concept, THIS is why I think the Dietary Guidelines are ridiculous, and THIS is why I eat the way I do.  I hope my position is more clear now.  Thank you and goodnight.

Historical Context, Part 5 - Inadequate Evidence

Following in the McGovern Senate Select Committee's lead, the USDA drafted its first official Dietary Guidelines for Americans in 1980.  The recommendations were strikingly similar to those of McGovern's recommendations, despite the fact that many of the organizations involved in food and nutrition, like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and the National Institute of Health (NIH), had considered the original Dietary Goals to be largely a political document instead of a scientific one.  Now, solid scientific evidence was needed to support the low-fat diets they were promoting (that's a little backwards, no?).  In the early 70's, NIH administrators decided against conducting a $1 billion clinical trial that would likely offer a definitive answer to whether or not low-fat diets prolong life.  Instead, they opted to conduct a half-dozen smaller observational studies, at a third of the cost, that they hoped would provide the evidence they were looking for.  The results of these studies were published between 1980 and 1984.

Four of these studies tried to establish relationships between dietary fat and heart disease.  They observed populations in Honolulu, Puerto Rico, Chicago, and Framingham, Massachusetts, and although some of the data suggested an association with fat and heart disease, the data involving all-cause death revealed a different story.  In the Honolulu study, the researchers followed 7,300 men of Japanese descent and found that those who developed heart disease ate slightly more fat and saturated fat than those who didn't.  However, the men who actually died tended to eat less fat and less saturated fat, so low-fat diets were associated with increased mortality.  Similar results were seen in Framingham and Puerto Rico.  The researchers' interpretation of these results is absolutely astounding.  They reported that because men in Puerto Rico and Honolulu who remained free of heart disease ate more starch, the studies suggest that Americans should follow the Dietary Guidelines and eat more starch.  Consequently, in order to avoid eating too many calories, Americans should also reduce fat intake.  WHAT??  Talk about twisting the results to support your hypothesis...

And it gets worse.  Also found in this data, with the exception of the Chicago study, was an association between cholesterol levels and cancer rates.  That is, low cholesterol predicts higher cancer rates.  This link was not abnormal.  In fact, by 1980, this association was showing up regularly in studies like this.  But this connection seemed to present a problem for the diet-heart hypothesis and was never publicized the way it should have been.  Just ask someone on the street today if they've ever heard that high cholesterol may be protective of cancer... they'll probably laugh and walk away.  Regardless, there is a strong link there.  In the Framingham study, men whose total cholesterol was below 190 mg/dl were three times more likely to get colon cancer as men with cholesterol over 220 mg/dl, and they were almost twice as likely to get any form of cancer than those with cholesterol over 280 mg/dl.  This is not an anomaly.  It is in fact very typical of these types of studies.  Those who have higher cholesterol tend to have a slightly greater risk of heart disease, but those with lower cholesterol clearly have a greater risk of cancer, and often times a greater total mortality rate as well.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) also published two studies in the early 1980's that were supposed to provide support for the diet-heart hypothesis.  The first was the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial (MRFIT), which collected a group of 12,000 men who were considered at imminent risk of having a heart attack; they all had a total cholesterol level over 290 mg/dl.  The men were randomly divided into two groups, a control group and an intervention group.  The control group was told to live, eat, and address their health problems however they wanted, while the intervention group was counseled to quit smoking, take medication to control their high blood pressure, and eat a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet.  The men were then followed for 7 years.  The results, announced in October 1982, showed that there had been slightly more deaths in the intervention group than in the control group.  Also of note, despite the fact that 21% of those in the intervention group quit smoking compared to only 6% in the control group, the intervention group had more lung cancer.  The researchers attributed this to the fact that those on the low-fat diet had lower cholesterol levels, hence were more likely to succumb to cancer.  I would concur.

The other NHLBI study was the Lipid Research Clinics (LRC) Coronary Primary Prevention Trial.  This trial collected 3,800 men who had cholesterol levels over 265 mg/dl, considered imminently likely to suffer a heart attack.  All of the participants were counseled to eat a cholesterol-lowering diet, but half of them took a cholesterol-lowering drug called cholestyramine, while the control group took a placebo.  So, to clarify, the only difference between the two groups was the presence or absence of the cholesterol-lowering drug.  This means that the only variable being tested was the effectiveness of the drug, nothing else.  Here are the results:  In the control group, cholesterol levels dropped 4%, 158 men suffered non-fatal heart attacks, 38 died from heart attacks, and overall 71 men died.  In the group receiving cholestyramine, cholesterol levels dropped by 13%, 130 men suffered non-fatal heart attacks, 30 died from heart attacks, and overall 68 men died.  Putting the heart disease numbers aside, 71 deaths versus 68 deaths.  This means that the cholesterol-lowering drug had improved by less than 0.2% the chance that any one of the men who took it would live through the next decade.  Very insignificant.  Any right-minded person would wonder, then, how such an unimpressive cholesterol-lowering drug trial was featured in Time magazine as proof that cholesterol was a plague to us all, and that we need to lower our cholesterol by eating low-fat, low-cholesterol diets.  The heading of the article read "Sorry, It's True. Cholesterol Really Is a Killer."  Basil Rifkind, who headed the study, was quoted in the article as saying, "It is now indisputable that lowering cholesterol with diet and drugs can actually cut the risk of developing heart disease and having a heart attack."  That may be true, but it doesn't appear to save any lives, and that's the ultimate goal. 

I hope it is clear at this point that the research backing the diet-heart hypothesis is surprisingly thin.  You would think that for an entire nation to adopt these low-fat diets as the gold-standard in healthy eating, and most of the civilized world for that matter, there would need to be a wealth of research supporting it.   As I've shown here, the science is ambiguous at best, but by this point, the media had grabbed a hold of the low-fat diet so hard that it would never let go.  The USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans are republished every 5 years and they're considered to be the most comprehensive, unbiased assessment of the science by many in the field of nutrition, even though they've barely changed since 1980.  Dietitians blindly take it as truth and implement it in their work often without questioning it.  To them I say, get some historical context.

Next time, in what will definitely be the last part of this Historical Context series, I'll wrap up all of this information in a nice, neat little package and attempt to bring it all together.

Historical Context, Part 4 - Dietary Goals for the United States

Probably the most influential event in the acceptance of the diet-heart hypothesis, the one that finally cemented the idea that we should all eat less fat and cholesterol, was the 1977 publication of Senator George McGovern's Dietary Goals for the United States.  This was, in McGovern's words, "the first comprehensive statement by any branch of the Federal Government on risk factors in the American diet."  In other words, until now, government had never told Americans what they should be eating.  Unfortunately, what led to the publication of these guidelines had little to do with nutritional science.

The influence of Ancel Keys on this process cannot be understated.  The man should take a large part of the credit (or blame) for convincing the country to fear fat, not just through his research but also through his influence on the American Heart Association (AHA), for which he was a board member.  As early as 1960, a full 17 years prior to the government recommendations, the AHA had begun recommending that Americans eat less saturated fat and cholesterol by avoiding red meat.  By 1970, the AHA had broadened their recommendations to all Americans (formerly they only applied to those with high cholesterol and smokers) and had begun an alliance with the vegetable oil and margarine manufacturers.  Two of these major manufacturers began distributing a "risk handbook" to doctors all over the country, touting the benefits of avoiding saturated fats and eating more polyunsaturated fats from vegetable oils like corn oil.  Doctors, of course, would begin passing this information along to their patients; all it took now was to add a label to a product saying "low in saturated fat and cholesterol" and poof! it's a health food in the public eye.  This alliance between the AHA and the vegetable oil manufacturers dissolved in the early 1970's due to research showing that polyunsaturated fats from vegetable oils and margarine could cause cancer in rats.  Nevertheless, the AHA was becoming more and more well-known by the public and would soon be considered a trusted source.  Today, you can find the AHA logo on such heart-healthy foods as Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms.

Another important political problem that was gaining momentum in the early 1970's was the problem of feeding the world's growing population.  The subject of famine in the third world was a constant presence in the news, where images of starving, impoverished children from all over the world were regularly shown.  A growing number of concerned individuals began blaming this world hunger on the wasteful American livestock industry.  The idea was brought to the mainstream through the popularity of a number of books, such as Diet for a Small Planet by Francis Moore Lappe and Appetite for Change by Warren Belasco.  According to Lappe, a 26-year-old vegetarian, the American beef industry required 20 million tons of soy and vegetable protein to produce two million tons of beef.  So, he argued, we would be doing the world's growing population a favor by bypassing this process and simply subsisting on the soy and vegetable protein ourselves.  This argument transformed meat-eating into a social issue, as well as a moral one.  Wrote Warren Belasco in Appetite for Change, "A shopper's decision at the meat counter in Gary, Indiana would affect food availability in Bombay, India."  In the eyes of these people, there wasn't enough food for everyone because the food industry was feeding it to cattle to support our meat-loving nation.  Coincidentally, this sentiment ran parallel to the AHA's stance that Americans should eat less saturated fat, especially red meat.  Just to clarify, I'm not some cold bastard who doesn't care about starving children in the third world, I'm simply trying to make the point that there were other factors at play in this whole diet-heart hypothesis deal that had nothing to do with recommending an optimal diet for health.  Besides, in 1968, before this public starvation scare even took hold, Norman Borlaug created high-yield varieties of dwarf wheat that had ended famines in India and Pakistan and averted the predicted mass starvations.  The hunger problem was already on its way to a solution.

And now we come to Senator George McGovern.  The aforementioned document, the 1977 Dietary Goals for the United States, was a product of McGovern's Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, a bipartisan nonlegislative committee that had been formed in 1968 with a mandate to wipe out malnutrition in America.  In its first five years, McGovern and his colleagues were very successful in implementing federal food-assistance programs to feed the hungry in America.  But by 1977, McGovern's Senate Select Committee was in danger of being reorganized and downgraded to a subcommittee, which would operate under the Senate Committee on Agriculture.  As investigative reporter William Broad explained it in a 1979 article, the Dietary Goals constituted a last-ditch effort to save McGovern's committee from reorganization.  The committee members knew that this was primarily a political move.  Committee staff director Marshall Matz was quoted as admitting, "We really were totally naive, a bunch of kids, who just thought, Hell, we should say something on this subject before we go bankrupt."  So McGovern and his committee decided to "just pick one" and support the diet-heart hypothesis, and recommend that Americans consume less fat and cholesterol.  The committee used the "changing American diet" story for the basis of its position, stating that at the turn of the century Americans consumed less fat and more carbohydrates, and heart disease was rare (refer to part 2 of this series for more on that).  Incidentally, they also loved Ancel Keys' Seven Countries Study (boooo.).They emphasized the need to return to the diet of the past, reducing meat and fat intake in favor of grains and other carbohydrates.

Now, put yourself in George McGovern's shoes for a moment... by endorsing the low-fat diet, you're winning on so many levels.  First, you're promoting the Senate Select Committee's reputation, not to mention your reputation as a politician.  Let's not forget politicians' obligation to make themselves look good.  Second, you're promoting a diet that can feed more people, the kind of diet that a government can get behind.  And third, you're giving the American people concrete advice to follow that you believe will improve their health.  The Dietary Guidelines were a culmination of all of these factors.  The major problem with the guidelines, however, was that now the public thought the debate was over; that fat and cholesterol were killers... and the science didn't support that.  The guidelines make it seem as though the data was clear, while in reality it was anything but.  Skeptics would continue to say that more research was needed in order to offer accurate advice, but unfortunately "more research needed" isn't particularly quotable or catchy.  The key concept to understand here is that the Dietary Guidelines for the United States was not a scientific document; it was a political one.  In the last part of this Historical Context series, I'll address the actual dietary research that refutes this low-fat and cholesterol dogma, and also discuss the ginormous impact that the Dietary Guidelines had on public opinion.