June 7, 2023 — Overheated rhetoric in nutrition is nothing new. But the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) set a high bar yesterday. In a press release, the organization rang alarm bells, saying that “big dairy” is on its way to “making school meals less healthy by allowing whole milk.” Oh my. Is the persistent fear of […]
March 9, 2023 — More and more, dietary health guidance points us to consider whole foods and how they fit into the overall pattern of our eating. Advice that divides individual foods or nutrients between good and bad labels is not so helpful because context matters. And yet, advice to avoid saturated fat remains ubiquitous. Perhaps such a broad […]
November 16, 2021 — Dietary bias can be very slow to fade. The American Heart Association updated its dietary guidance for the first time in more than a decade. The new guidance has a lot of good things in it. There’s less emphasis on individual good and bad foods. More emphasis on healthful patterns for eating. The guidance makes […]
September 24, 2021 — Julia Child may have had it right. Way back in 1990, she had serious questions about dietary guidance to avoid saturated fat. At a food event in 1990, she described the response to her renowned cooking: “I hear them saying, ‘Here comes Julia, with all the cream and butter.’ “Everybody is overreacting. If fear of […]
September 23, 2021 — It’s amazing how strong the biases about dairy foods can be. In the process of developing the 2020 dietary guidelines, it came up over and over again. Negative sentiment about dairy was one of the top themes in public comments. One bias is a visceral disdain for dairy foods in any form. Some people cannot […]
June 18, 2020 — In ordinary times, yesterday’s meeting of the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee would have been big news. They were supposed to unveil their draft report. But instead, the meeting came and went with a small thud. That’s because everyone has already staked out a position and they’re digging in. Also, it’s fair to say that […]
June 4, 2020 — Should dietary guidelines tell the public to eat as little saturated fat as possible? This is definitely a hot debate. But we’re not so sure it’s a great one. Perhaps it’s just becoming tiresome. Regardless, what’s clear is that when top experts presented this debate at Nutrition Live Online, it was a great event. In […]
September 25, 2019 — Oh dear. Low quality carbs are down in the American diet, but it’s not good enough. Nutrition scientists from Harvard and Tufts say the glass is half full. We’re eating too many bad carbs. Fang Fang Zhang, a senior author of a new paper in JAMA, explains: Although there are some encouraging signs that the […]
June 5, 2019 — For nearly five decades now, beef consumption has been dropping. Poultry has risen. Why? Because of a steady stream of warnings that red meat raises the risk of heart disease. But a new study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition raises questions about this conventional wisdom. In a randomized, controlled study, researchers found no […]
October 28, 2018 — Has a big butter bias bitten the BMJ on the backside? Roughly 180 academics from all over the world have signed an open letter to the BMJ. They’re asking for better editorial rigor at one of the BMJ journals – The British Journal of Sports Medicine. What prompted this? A series of articles seeming to promote a pro-butter […]
