Tom Laskawy points us to a nice op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle arguing that the government is pretty much killing people by allowing industry lobbyists to writes nutritional guidelines. T. Colin Campbell, a biochemist at Cornell University, and Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr., a surgeon, write:
Right now, the U.S. government's most widely publicized dietary recommendations are deadly. The Food and Nutrition Board's 2002 report says that to reduce degenerative diseases like heart disease and cancer, we can consume up to 35 percent of our calories as fat, up to 35 percent of our calories as protein and up to 25 percent of calories as added sugars.Here is a daily diet that meets those nutrition guidelines: Breakfast: 1 cup Fruit Loops; 1 cup skim milk; 1 package M&M milk chocolate candies; fiber and vitamin supplements. Lunch: Grilled cheddar cheeseburger. Dinner: 3 slices pepperoni pizza, with a 16-ounce soda and 1 serving Archway sugar cookies.This helps explain why 12-year-old schoolchildren develop thickening of their carotid arteries to the brain, and 80 percent of 20-year-old soldiers, dying in combat, are found to have coronary artery heart disease.
The authors offer three recommendations going forward: First, "no scientist with financial ties to the food and drug industries should chair - or choose the members of - panels that set dietary guidelines." That seems pretty basic. Second, "President Obama should establish a new institute at the National Institutes of Health dedicated exclusively to exploring the link between diet, health and disease. Today, there are 27 institutes and centers at the National Institutes of Health, but none devoted to nutrition, despite the great public interest in the subject." That, again, makes perfect sense.Third, "Congress should require that medical schools - as a condition of receiving federal grants - offer residency programs on dietary approaches to preventing and treating disease." I'm not against more of a preventive focus in medical schools, but it's just not the case that Americans eat poorly because their doctors don't know much about diet. Still, the first two recommendations are wise, and this stuff is going to be important. Health spending has to come down,and if that's to happen, we're going to have to start buying more of the cheap stuff that makes us healthy so we can spend less on the expensive stuff we need when we're sick.
