Why the recommendations for healthy eating given so far are unfounded

A joint group of scientists from Scotland and the USA reviewed the information that underlies the popular and accepted by many professional medical associations recommendations to reduce the consumption of food sources of all fat to 30% and of saturated fat to a level of no more than 10% of the energy value of the daily caloric intake.

They concluded that these recommendations are completely unfounded, especially since their benefit has not been proven by the results of any randomized controlled trials.

By the way, these recommendations, so to speak, have been in effect in the USA since 1977, and in Great Britain since 1983, and in Bulgaria they were adopted by the Ministry of Health in the last 10 years or so.

Currently, even stricter norms have been adopted, limiting the use of saturated fat to 5-6% of daily caloric intake, and this recommendation at least needs to be revised.

In addition, the authors of this analysis point out that recommendations regarding the amount of dietary fat should not be prioritized at all.

According to them, when people try to limit fat intake, usually the amount of protein in their daily diet does not change /usually we get 15-20% of our daily caloric intake in the form of protein/, but automatically increases consumption of unsaturated fats and carbohydrates, and this change may do more harm than good.

For example, an increase in the consumption of carbohydrates, especially refined ones, also leads to dyslipidemia with increased levels of triglycerides and a decrease in high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, that is, the “good” one.

This hypothesis was not directly tested in the discussed meta-analysis, but there are numerous studies that found that people who were advised to limit animal fats ended up replacing them with vegetable oils.

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The main conclusion, according to the authors, needs to be the greater utility of unprocessed natural products compared to arbitrary restriction of any macronutrient, as this necessitates the use of larger amounts of highly processed food.

The meta-analysis was published online in the February issue of the journal Open Heart /this is one of the journals of the publishing group BMJ – British Medical Journal/.

A companion publication to the editorial stated that the negative result of the meta-analysis was not surprising, as similar conclusions had previously been drawn in a number of cohort studies.

Nevertheless, according to commentators, the evidence for a causal relationship between fat consumption and the development of ischemic heart disease remains quite convincing.

Furthermore, even when there is no doubt about the existence of this condition, randomized controlled trials of “nutritional interventions” in this area represent a major problem in themselves, because in order to demonstrate a statistically significant efficacy of their application, it is necessary to the eating behavior of the participants changed over a very long period of time.

In 1977, recommendations from the US Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs were first published, instructing American citizens to limit their fat intake to less than 30%, and saturated – up to less than 10% of the energy value of the daily food intake.