'Less Idiotic' Guidelines? That's Debatable

Francis Menton of The Manhattan Contrarian recently took a look at the latest federal diet guidelines and concluded that they are "somewhat less idiotic" than the ones that had been on the books before.

While I think Menton shares my contempt for federal dietary guidelines, I don't share all his convictions about nutrition, and I want to state up front that, in my opinion, the only reason to consider anything Bobby Kennedy says is for the purpose of arming oneself against the latest round of dishonest pronouncements from this man, whom Donald Trump and his cowardly lackeys in the Republican Party have granted an undeserved bully pulpit.

When Bobby Kennedy isn't lying, he's making things up -- to the extent that I'd look up for myself if he told me the sky is blue.

That out of the way, whatever motivated Menton to look through the guidance, my summary would be that (1) some of it might resemble an improvement in dietary advice in the same way a clock stuck at 12:00 will appear to be right twice a day; (2) lots of it (e.g., "Eat real food.") is meaningless, but will sound good to people with poor intellectual hygiene; and (3) lots of it is exactly the kind of nonsense that, until five minutes ago, conservatives appeared to know was exactly the kind of stupidity one might expect from an anti-vaxxer hippie.

Regarding the first, Menton notes that even the apparent improvements might not really be:

[I]t is not clear at all that the war on saturated fats has actually been ended. On the first page of the new Guidelines, we find straightforward recommendations to "consume meat" and to "consume dairy." That's a pretty good start. But then on page 3, we come to this:

In general, saturated fat consumption should not exceed 10% of total daily calories.

And as for the second and third:

[T]hey just can't stop themselves from going off into pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo. Start at the top of the introductory message from the Secretaries:

The message is simple: eat real food.

What does that even mean? Elsewhere in the document they bounce from "real food" over to "whole food," another meaningless term as far as I can tell. Yet another term that appears a few times is "nutrient dense." What does that one mean? Sounds like pure mumbo jumbo to me.

As you would expect from Kennedy, there is much criticism of "highly processed" foods (e.g., "Avoid highly processed packaged, prepared, ready-to-eat, or other foods that are salty or sweet.") Well, the term "highly processed" sure sounds bad. But does "processed" include, for example, cooking? Why isn't that OK? Where is the line drawn? There's also a recommendation to avoid "chemicals." OK, how about vitamins? Aren't vitamins chemicals? Is it OK to add them? If vitamins are OK, how about preservatives?

The more of this you read, the more you realize that they don't know what they are talking about...

Thank you, Mr. Menton, for helping me know that I'm not the only person on earth who knows that cooking is a form of processing, that not all processing is bad, and that food is made of chemicals -- including water.

Menton's closing take is far more charitable than mine, which is that Kennedy should never have been nominated or confirmed, and that he should be impeached and removed from office. (See South Carolina or the recent changes to child vaccination schedules for starters.)

The government has no business being in charge of science or medicine, but so long as it is, it should take pains to seek out and follow the best scientific advice out there. And no, that does not mean "gold standard science" as defined by a dishonest attorney who wants to sue vaccine makers.

-- CAV