The Dietary Guidelines 2010 Must Do No Harm Or Be Overhauled. | Carbohydrates Can Kill
The report of Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010, has stirred up a national controversy and is facing a wave of fierce objections from the public and many health and nutritional experts outside the US Government and the special interest groups.
The controversy is centered on the soundness of these guidelines, which are mostly a copy of the earlier guidelines since 1980, with emphasis on the more consumption of daily calories from carbohydrates and the less from fats especially the saturated fats. [1]
The reliability of these guidelines are further questioned when both the statistics and the layman’s observation concur that the US population has been rapidly growing heavier to that at least six or seven out of every ten adults are either overweight or obese since 1980. [2] Worst of all, the trends in overweight and obesity have also moved into the younger population including toddlers and infants. [3, 4]
Despite that the previous Dietary Guidelines and Food Pyramids have been well publicized, reports such as this, by JD Wright, et al. “Trends in Intake of Energy and Macronutrients—United States, 1971-2000”, points out that, during the study period, the prevalence of obesity in the US increased from 14.5% to 30.9%, the average daily calorie intake increased from 2,450 kcals to 2,618 kcals for men and from 1,543 kcals to 1,877 kcals for women; the percentage of kcals from carbohydrate increased from 42.4% to 49.0% for men and from 45.4% to 52.6% for women; while the percentage of kcals from total fat “ironically decreased’ from 36.9 to 32.8% for men and from 36.1% to 32.8% for women; and the percentage of kcals from saturated fat also “notably decreased” from 13.5% to 10.9% for men and 13.0% to 11.0% for women.
Only a slight decrease from protein was observed. A USDA food consumption survey for the periods between 1989 and 1991, and between 1994 and 1996, indicates the increase of daily calorie intake was caused by higher carbohydrate consumption. The NHANES data for 1971-2000 concur the USDA data, and point out that an increase of 62.4 grams in carbohydrates for women and 67.77 grams for men, while an increase of 6.5 grams in fat for women and a decrease of 5.3 grams for men. Based on these official data, excess consumption in carbohydrate, not in fat, is responsible for the uptrend in obesity for the decades since 1980. [5]
