For nearly three decades, Americans have become accustomed to hearing about the latest dietary guidelines, which are required by federal regulation to be revised and reissued at five-year intervals.
Mid-way to the drafting of the 2010 guidelines, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University raise questions about the benefits of federal dietary guidelines, and urge that guideline writers be guided by explicit standards of evidence to ensure the public good. The researchers, led by Paul Marantz, M.D., MPH, associate dean for clinical research education at Einstein, outline their argument in the January 22 online edition of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
“When dietary guidelines were initially introduced in the late 1970s, their population-based approach was especially attractive since it was presumed to carry little risk,” says Dr. Marantz, who also is professor of epidemiology and population health, and of medicine at Einstein. “However, the message delivered by these guidelines might actually have had a negative impact on health, including our current obesity epidemic. The possibility that these dietary guidelines might actually be endangering health is at the core of our concern about the way guidelines are currently developed and issued.”