From the Nutrition Coalition

• By Nina Teicholz, author “The Big Fat Lie”

  Member(s) of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee Blows the Whistle on the Process

  TNC published a letter detailing allegations by one or more members of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (Committee/DGAC). The far-ranging allegations include:

  Exclusion of nearly all studies on weight loss involving a hypocaloric intervention, owing to the idea that weight loss would confound other health outcomes. These studies have been excluded even when obesity is the primary object of the study. It is inconceivable in a country where obesity continues to rise—now 42.4% of all adults—that these studies would be excluded.

  Exclusion of nearly all studies on low-carb diets. The Committee used an exclusion criteria that is the very definition of a low-carb diet, and this had the effect of excluding virtually all low-carb diet studies. The Committee's apparent effort to ignore the low-carb science is unfortunately consistent with actions taken by the last DGAC, in 2015, which buried all low-carb studies in the Methodology section of its report, making it impossible to issue any formal recommendation on the topic. TNC's Nina Teicholz explains and documents these events in her recent WSJ op-ed here—in case you missed it. Link is to full text, without paywall.

  Outdated science:
  Some scientific reviews, such as those by the Birth-through-24-months subcommittee, include studies only up to 2016, despite a Congressional mandate that the Dietary Guidelines should include a comprehensive review of the science "that is current at the time."

  In addition, the Nutrition Coalition notes that all the recent studies challenging the caps on saturated fats have been ignored. The evidence linking saturated fats to heart disease was judged by the DGAC to be “strong,” not only for adults, but also, for the first time, children. Yet scientific justification for a continuation of these caps is lacking, and the Subcommittee presented weak evidence to make its case. Read our blog post on this issue. 
  
  See the many other scientific problems with the DGAC report detailed in our letter.