Why the US Dietary Guidelines Don’t Apply to 90% of Americans and How They Can

Episode 149 1h 4m

Overview

The dietary guidelines laid out by the government are conflicting with good health in so many ways. For one, they are recommendations that would only work for someone who is already healthy, yet close to 90% of our population in the US is metabolically unhealthy. They also don’t take ethnicity and socioeconomic status into account, among many other factors.

This is a big issue. Clearly, we should be providing Americans with guidelines that will actually serve their health. And research shows that whether we like it or not, as a society we’ve followed the guidelines over several decades and suffered the consequences with worsening health.

Today’s guest has been a huge inspiration to me, as she’s challenged the conventional wisdom on nutrition and continues to expose the truth behind our guidelines and the food industry.

Nina and I dive right into the many ways in which our dietary guidelines are broken. For example, the current framework recommends 3 servings of refined grains and 6 servings of grains total, every day, and states that 10% of our calories can come from sugar. These are awful suggestions for people with type 2 diabetes and other metabolic disorders, which are rampant in the US. And since 1970, we’ve decreased fat by 25% of our total caloric intake and only gotten fatter.

So why don’t the guidelines correspond to our population’s needs? Nina tells us the disturbing truth of industry benefit over what the science says and sheds light on the conflicts of interest happening behind the scenes. She also pinpoints some of the most current research that should be governing our upcoming guidelines and how we can work towards change.

I hope you’ll tune in to gain a better understanding of our current dietary guidelines.

Sponsors

This episode is brought to you by Tushy, Essentia, and Four Sigmatic. The Dr. Hyman Show works with a select group of sponsors to allow for ongoing production and allow it to be zero-cost to anyone who wishes to listen to and watch the podcast.

Topics Covered

  • How we are all affected by the U.S. dietary guidelines, even if we think we aren’t

    (3:15 - 7:06)

  • Why the guidelines don’t apply the majority of Americans

    (8:10 - 12:01)

  • 90% of scientific reviews that inform the U.S. dietary guidelines did not take race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status into account

    (13:53 - 17:43)

  • Conflicts of interest among scientists on the U.S. dietary guidelines scientific committee

    (17:31 - 21:22)

  • How the Office of Dietary Guidelines prohibits consideration of systematic reviews

    (26:35 - 31:21)

  • Why the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Committee chose not to consider research on weight loss and low-carbohydrate diets

    (29:46 - 34:32)

  • The ongoing confusion about saturated fat, cholesterol, and heart disease

    (37:19 - 42:05)

  • What can the average person do to improve the U.S. dietary guidelines?

    (48:42 - 53:28)

  • How to design guidelines that would help fix chronic disease

    (51:38 - 56:24)

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Ep. 149 - Why the US Dietary Guidelines Don’t Apply to 90% of Americans and How They Can