New Dietary Guidelines to Keep Americans Healthy (13:15)
The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans will focus on promoting healthier eating patterns
Broadcast Retirement Network’s Jeffrey Snyder discusses new dietary guidelines released by the Food & Drug Administration with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine’s Andrew Binovi.
Jeffrey H Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
This morning, dietary guidelines to keep Americans healthy. Joining me now is Andrew Bonovi of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Andrew, great to see you.
Thanks for joining us on the program this morning.
Andrew Binovi, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for inviting me. It’s good to be here.
Jeffrey H Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, and there’s so much going on in where you’re located in Washington, DC. We’re gonna talk this morning about dietary guidelines, bit of a, maybe a little bit different focus under the current administration than maybe under previous administrations necessitating some guideline changes.
Andrew Binovi, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
Right, right. And just a little bit of background. The federal government updates the dietary guidelines every five years.
And these guidelines are used by physicians, they’re used by dieticians and many other clinicians in order to tell their patients what they should be eating. But importantly, from a policy standpoint, the dietary guidelines are used by many federal nutrition programs, namely the National School Lunch Program and the WIC Program. And these programs benefit millions of Americans every day.
Think of all the school kids that are eating meals at school. Some kids are eating three meals a day at school. So if you can improve the dietary guidelines, you can improve the nutrition for these kids, kind of all in one movement.
So that’s kind of why it’s really important and why our organization, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, is really connected to the dietary guidelines because we wanna see better school meals. We wanna see better food in the WIC programs and others. So this administration is actually moving forward with a revision to the dietary guideline that’s due almost any day now.
Something that’s been ongoing for the past couple of years, kind of carrying over from the previous administration. And what we’re expecting to see out of the next dietary guidelines is a focus on two things. One of them is a focus on ultra-processed foods.
And a second thing is to kind of remove the current dietary guidelines, recommendations that people limit the amount of saturated fat in their diet. So depending on how this kind of shakes out and the details are kind of, the devil is always in the details, as they say. We could see the dietary guidelines either being helpful or we could see the dietary guidelines going in a different direction.
Jeffrey H Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, I thought what was interesting is, and we’ve had Dr. Bernard on in the past. You guys do a lot of polling. Recently you had a poll, not you in particular, but the organization did.
39% of respondents to an online poll incorrectly said all processed foods are unhealthy. So there’s some myths, I think, that need to be busted here.
Andrew Binovi, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
Right, and that’s kind of one of the places where there’s hoping there’s nuance in the next dietary guidelines around ultra-processed foods. Because I think people have like a vague idea of what ultra-processed foods are, but there’s actually no universal definition of what an ultra-processed food is. So it’s kind of starting there, like what is an ultra-processed food?
That’s up to debate. And actually the federal government is actually trying to come up with that definition right now. But right, if you take a look at ultra-processed foods, not all of them are created equal.
The way that the current kind of prevailing method by which foods are classified, you have kind of on one side, you have minimally or non-processed foods, and the other side you have ultra-processed foods. But on the minimally processed foods, you have like an apple and you also have an egg. And then on ultra-processed foods, you have like ice cream, but you also have breakfast cereals.
So obviously when you start looking at the nutrients and you start looking at the ingredients of these foods, they’re a lot different. You can’t really say like, well, an apple and an egg are equivalent nutritionally, but they’re in the same grouping when it comes to processing. Just like you can’t say breakfast cereals and ice cream are the same.
Although, you know, would love to have ice cream for breakfast every morning, but that’s probably not best for my health. But we’ve seen that if folks that are eating, you know, breakfast cereals every day, even though that’s an ultra-processed food, that tends to have better health outcomes for those that are eating, say, bacon and eggs for breakfast each morning.
Jeffrey H Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
You know, when you were talking, you made me think of Slim Goodbody. That was a, I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember him, but that was a, he was kind of an advocate that they would show him like with the cartoons, and he would talk about eating the right foods. Back then we had the, by the way, we had the four food groups.
We’ve moved away from that. But let me ask you, you mentioned kind of the understanding about what an ultra-processed food is. Only a third of Americans, based on some survey data, actually read the food labels.
That’s very disconcerting. And it seems like there’s, you know, in addition to these guidelines, we need to have some education around what you need to look for. You know, what is saturated fat?
What are the different ingredients and what does it really mean?
Andrew Binovi, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
Yeah, you’re exactly right. So this is kind of one of the challenges whenever any dietary guidelines comes out is making sure that the general public kind of knows what they should be eating. And like, I think the classic example, you mentioned the food pyramid and the 4432, which is, I think us Gen Xers will remember from the 80s.
But if you go and look at the prevailing way that the public knows about dietary guidelines right now, they see that MyPlate icon. And on that plate, you have like fruits, grains, but you also have this section that says protein. And that, you know, people don’t go to the store and buy protein.
So you have to tell them, well, what exactly does this mean? A really good, you know, even better example of that is that the current dietary guidelines say that you should limit the saturated fat to 10% of your total daily calories. And that makes sense to many dieticians, that hopefully makes sense to folks as physicians, but the public, they may not know what saturated fat is.
They may not know how to calculate, you know, 10% of calories. So that’s a real challenge. And this administration to their credit wants to make the dietary guidelines easier for people to understand.
And I think that’s a really good step in the right direction. I think they should be clear. The dietary guidelines should say, instead of limiting your saturated fat, they should say, hey, don’t eat bacon, don’t eat eggs, don’t eat dairy milk, because those are the leading drivers of saturated fat in the standard American diet.
So you can be clear about what foods people should eat and what foods they shouldn’t eat. And we shouldn’t be like coding things in language that not everyone understands, whether it’s quote, saturated fat or quote, ultra processed foods, because you’re right, there is an educational like gap, an educational hurdle that we need to overcome to making sure people are eating healthier.
Jeffrey H Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, that’s a, you know, that’s a challenge I would imagine for the regulators, the Food and Drug Administration. They have a responsibility to regulate, to write the rules around foods, but also these nutritional guidelines to make it in a way that anybody can understand. And you were talking earlier about children that, you know, they’re in school, they want, you wanna get them off on the right foot, right?
I mean, it’s like anything else, you want them to be, to get their lives off in the right way so that they’re not obese, they don’t have these disease challenges.
Andrew Binovi, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
Right, you know, people who are exposed to good, healthy diets earlier in their lives are more likely to keep those good habits up in the future. And, you know, it’s not even just kind of healthy habits, but we have seen increases in children, you know, not only being pre-diabetic, but having type two diabetes, we’re seeing like rising obesity levels in children. And so that’s something that, you know, needs to be addressed and you’re right, education is a huge part of that.
Jeffrey H Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Let me ask you, you know, your own, I would say you’re not, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re kind of on the inside, I’m not on the inside when it comes to this. We’re gonna have some new dietary guidelines. What’s the process?
I would imagine, you know, in my world, the retirement world, when we have new regs, they come out for like a comment period, and then they take the comments and then they rework the rule. How do these guidelines work? Do they put out the guidelines in a proposed form, then they look for feedback from people like y’all to give them feedback, or is that done?
Andrew Binovi, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
No, that’s a good question. So we’re actually at the tail end of this process. So this started about three or four years ago.
The previous administration put together a dietary guidelines advisory committee, and they are the experts, the physicians, the scientists that kind of come together and provide certain recommendations to the administration, because at the end of the day, the dietary guidelines are a mix of science, but they’re also a mix of what the administration wants to put forward, you know, politically. So the science that kind of went into it, that process has already been done. The same time the advisory committee hears from the public, and many of our members, physicians committee members testified in support of certain things that we wanted to see in the guidelines.
And so that process has completed. This administration has indicated that they’re probably not going to take a lot of the advice that was included in the scientific advisory report. Instead, you know, they’ve been pretty clear on the things that they want to focus in the guidelines.
Like I mentioned, ultra processed foods, making sure people are consuming more whole milk, which I think many, if you talk to many physicians, they would disagree with that assertion. And kind of other things that we’ve been hearing about. So that process is kind of already complete.
But I will say the next step kind of after this is the dietary guidelines comes out. And then a couple of years later, the USDA comes up with the patterns, the food patterns that use the guidelines in schools and in other programs. So there will probably be another opportunity for comments in the future.
Kind of this is kind of an ongoing process. And then, you know, five years from now, we’re kind of in the same boat again. But the dietary guidelines that came out 10 years ago versus the dietary guidelines that came out five years ago versus the dietary guidelines that come out now, we’re always supposed to be looking at the latest nutrition science.
And it’s a good that this process is kind of so often because the science is always involved in.
Jeffrey H Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Last question for you. So once the guidelines come out, I guess that the physicians, meaning the primary care physicians, the pediatricians, all those people, they get this information. They’re passing things along to their patients, to their patients, you know, parents, et cetera.
If I’m a patient or a parent, what should I be looking out for? Or should I raise these types of questions in my next, my child’s next, or my own physical?
Andrew Binovi, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
I mean, the Physicians Committee, we agree that, you know, discussions about nutrition should be made, you know, with your doctor. Your doctor should be the one to be able to push you in the right direction when it comes to diet. Unfortunately, many physicians aren’t equipped to do that because they’re not getting nutrition education in medical school.
They’re not keeping up in their CMEs when it comes to nutrition. And because they’ve got, they’re so busy with so many other things. So it’s really a challenge.
And that’s one of the things that our organization is really pushing for is, you know, more training in medical schools when it comes to nutrition. So yeah, we agree. If you have questions about diet, please do ask your physician.
Or, you know, ask to be referred to a dietician. Ask to be referred to a specialist in that regard. Because, you know, these are very much, what you eat is directly impacted, is directly impacting your health.
So definitely it’s a question that needs to be asked.
Jeffrey H Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, certainly we’re looking forward to seeing these new dietary guidelines. And, you know, certainly we’ll talk to my physician when I go to see him. Andrew, it’s great to see you.
Thanks for joining us. And we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon. Yeah, thank you so much.
Really appreciate it. Thanks, Andrew. Great to see you.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. That’s all for this morning. Until tomorrow, I’m Jeff Snyder.
Stay safe, keep on saving, and don’t forget, roll with the changes.