On Wednesday, the Trump administration came out with new dietary guidelines for the United States. The goal is to give Americans guidance about what makes a healthy diet. As promised, the new guidelines are much shorter than in the past — 10 pages versus 100 or more — and written to be widely accessible. Many people will read these, and (possibly) take the advice.
Under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s leadership, the Trump administration has made many public health changes that have medical experts concerned (just this week: changes to the childhood vaccine schedule). However, the new nutrition advice is, dare I say it, overall very sensible. It emphasizes fruits and vegetables, prioritizes whole foods and is clear that people’s food choices should depend on individual characteristics like age and activity. This doesn’t, however, mean that everything in here makes sense for everyone.
In brief: Here’s the good, the fine, and the weird parts of the new nutrition guidelines.
The Good
Emphasis on whole foods: The guidelines advise people to eat “whole foods” or “real food.” This is, broadly, very good. Virtually all nutrition experts agree that eating foods in which the ingredients are limited, recognizable and not highly processed is a good thing. Heavily processed foods can increase caloric consumption and thus contribute to obesity.
Early allergen exposure: The new guidelines continue to emphasize the introduction of allergens — including food containing peanuts, but also wheat, eggs and shellfish — at around six months because of very clear data that it lowers the risk of developing food allergies later. This may seem like a small point, but an estimated 8 percent of children have food allergies and it’s an easy change parents can make with potentially large impacts on public health. This was in the older guidelines, but highlighting it in this much shorter document is worth a lot.
The Totally Fine
Full-fat dairy: The new guidelines push for consuming full-fat dairy. For years, there has been an emphasis on reduced-fat dairy, especially for children, because it has fewer calories and less saturated fat. But in the data, there is no consistent association between reduced-fat dairy and weight and, if anything, full-fat dairy is associated with lower obesity rates. However, if you prefer reduced or nonfat dairy, there isn’t any evidence-based reason not to consume it. All dairy is fine.
The Complex
Protein: Perhaps the biggest change in the new guidelines is recommended protein intake. The previous recommended dietary allowance for protein was 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight per day. The average American adult weighs about 180 pounds, so this amounts to about 70 grams of protein per day. Most Americans already eat this much protein, or a bit more.
The new guidelines suggest 50 to 100 percent more protein, 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram. For someone weighing 180 pounds, this might mean adding at the amount of protein that you might find in seven ounces of chicken breast or 10 eggs.
Most people probably won’t get all that much benefit from eating 10 eggs every day (or gulping down protein water or any of the other protein-heavy snacks that have become ubiquitous on grocery shelves). That’s because the benefits to more protein only really show up when combined with resistance training. When you lift weights, you create microscopic tears in your muscles that the body uses protein to repair. But when you consume more protein than you need to rebuild muscle, the excess protein is treated like other calorie sources.
Most Americans do not get very much exercise, and fewer than 25 percent get the recommended resistance training. This means that for most people, if they eat more protein, they will not get stronger or healthier.
Moreover, this advice may be counterproductive. Many Americans will hear this as “add protein” rather than “replace other calories with protein.” This may lead people to simply eat more calorically dense food, like red meat, which most people do not need to do.
No added sugar for kids: Previous guidelines suggested no added sugar in food for children under 2; the new guidelines extend this up to age 10. On the one hand, some of our most compelling data on diet suggests that excess sugar in early childhood leads to more health problems, even much later in life. This may be because early sugar exposure can affect children’s long-term taste preferences. American children currently consume a lot of added sugar.
On the other hand, avoiding added sugar until the age of 10 is unrealistic for nearly everyone. The nutrition guidelines — which suggest no cookies or birthday cake until a child is 11 — are likely to scare parents without changing behavior. It’s also not well supported by the science. While there is data that consuming a lot of sugar leads to more metabolic issues later in life, this isn’t compared to no sugar. The healthier children in the studies had some sugar, just not as much. And completely limiting food groups for children can make a forbidden food more appealing.
There is a balance here. Most children in America would benefit from eating less sugar, but that doesn’t mean parents should be afraid of every cookie. Moderation is key.
The Weird
Beef tallow: Why do we keep mentioning this? Who is using this for cooking? Where would I even buy it? Mr. Kennedy seems to love beef tallow as a healthy fat, but it’s also very high in saturated fat, and these guidelines set limits on that.
The upside down pyramid: I get it as a talking point, but the upside-down pyramid used to illustrate the guidelines isn’t helping anyone, and the blueberries are disturbingly large.
If there is one thing to strongly object to about these guidelines, it’s that they are likely to be hard for many people to follow. Eating more vegetables, lean protein and whole foods is a laudable goal and also difficult to achieve, especially with limited financial resources, limited grocery options and the fact that high-sugar, high-fat foods are addictive and habit forming. These guidelines are a very good start for telling people where to go; now the job should be helping them get there.
Emily Oster is the founder and chief executive of ParentData and a professor of economics at Brown University.
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