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Comment by personjerry | Hacker News Reader

So, supposedly these guidelines looked out for your health, but given that so many of their "findings" have been overturned, then they've basically been giving advice that actually hindered peoples' health, and so one might understand that they've actually been harmful!

This might lead one to question the validity of other government suggestions. Or even policies. Maybe that's too far. Nonetheless, I think this raises serious questions as to how much faith we can put even into the government, even their "scientific" findings.

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I'm sorry, but welcome to science. Theories evolve, new things are discovered, we make appropriate changes.

If the government stubbornly held onto their previous policies then they would be open to criticism, but the fact that things are changing is a good thing.

Nutritional science is hard, our bodies are complex.

I'm sorry, but welcome to politics. The dietary guidelines speak more to lobbying efforts than anything else. It's disingenuous to suggest that the US dietary guidelines are aligned to the evolving theories in nutritional science.

You get enough bad ideas hiding under the aegis of "science." Some guys claim something and pretend to be more sure about it than they've right to be. Dress it up as a scientific theory and you're personally unassailable.

I happen to think the data did and still does support restricting total fat. Highly saturated fats are mostly benign, but many fatty foods also have substantial quantities of unsaturated fats that are clearly linked to health consequences. So in practice "take easy on the fatty foods" has always been not bad for blanket general advice. They are probably making a mistake with this revision.

> Highly saturated fats are mostly benign, but many fatty foods also have substantial quantities of unsaturated fats that are clearly linked to health consequences.

I thought it was the saturated fats that are unhealthy, and the unsaturated fats that are benign and even essential up to some amount daily?

It's complicated :)

I've been reading a lot of papers on this subject recently, and it seems there is a complex interplay between intake of carbohydrate, saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat and monounsaturated fat.

Millions of years ago, creatures that you and I came from, through N levels of evolution, ingested saturated fat.

Today, some dickhead wants to tell me it's bad, so he can sell me "edible plastic" that introduces completely new molecules into my biology.

Try raising an infant without saturated fat. They will not thrive on skim milk or soy "milk". They need the fat stuff. Infant formula? Check the ingredients: chances are you will see coconut oil or its ilk.

Do you have a better alternative that we should put our faith in? At least the government has a somewhat transparent and, at least in theory, non-profit motivated process for creating these guidelines. Virtually any other source, other than doing the research yourself, is going to be about selling you something. And the fact of the matter is, the government probably has the most incentive of any organisation to keep people healthy.

I actually find that this increases my confidence in government recommendations. The fact that the old guidelines are being updated given new research over the past decades is a wonderful thing to see.

We live on a big planet with many different countries populated by the same species of human. Perhaps you could start by reading what other countries' governments recommend in terms of nutrition?

Well then why don't you enlighten us on the result of such a reading? For the impatient, I'll spill the beans - because the guidelines are quite similar across the board! They're all based on the same research and scientific majority opinion at the time! Who would've thought?

A few incorrect parts don't mean the guidelines aren't a net benefit. Just imagine what an average school cafeteria would serve if no regulations were in place at all.

Yeah, they used to serve real food. About 20 years ago, the school districts where I lived were buying real ingredients and the cooks were actually cooking meals. Now it's all packaged crap that they slap on a baking sheet and barely warm up.

Stupid scientists with their stupid science that isn't alway right.

I think the problem for is a lot of it wasn't science driven, was more economic/ag policy driving waves hands science.

You seriously think ag policy created the food pyramid? It wasn't just the government promoting the idea that people needed to limit salt and fat.

>You seriously think ag policy created the food pyramid?

Yes.

I think things that government agencies do don't happen in a vacuum.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/diet/themes/py...

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