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All right, let's get into the episode.
Hello and welcome back to the show.
I'm Patrick.
Today's episode, a wee bit different.
In fact, we have done this once or twice, but it's a little bit different than our usual.
We're bringing over two episodes, two conversations from another podcast of mine called The Consistency Project that I do with our friend EC Sienkowski.
EC is a By far my go-to for all things nutrition.
She is an absolute master at simplifying, clarifying and synthesizing what can be incredibly complex science into stuff that actually makes sense for us normal muggles.
If you've been listening to Chasing Excellence for a while, you already know her.
In fact, the last time we did this very thing bringing some episodes over was back in September of last year.
We did an episode called Stop Choosing the Wrong Discomfort, where EC shared her big takeaways from Michael Easter's book The Comfort Crisis, which we highly recommend, and the Netflix documentary series about The Biggest Loser.
So if you want more of this, go back, find that episode from September.
Today's conversations are about the latest government attempts to guide what Americans should be eating.
First, we have the new USDA dietary guidelines that just dropped not very long ago.
The FDA's updated rules on what food companies can label as quote unquote, healthy and spoiler alert.
They share the same fundamental problem.
So if you like what you hear and you want more, go find the Consistency Project wherever you're listening to this.
Go back and find our previous episodes with EC.
You will not be disappointed and I promise you, you will learn some good old stuff.
All right.
Let us get into this first conversation all about the new USDA dietary guidelines that I'm sure if you have been on the internet recently you have heard something about.
So let's break it down.
We're going to talk about – I was really excited when you sent me a note that we were going to do this, because this is one of those things that I was like I should send EC a text to see if we're going to talk about this.
But I was like, I think we're going to.
So we are.
We're going to talk about the recently released and updated dietary guidelines here in the U.S.
Specifically, we're going to talk about your five practical takeaways from your review of the guidelines right.
Oh, yeah.
They were everywhere that I looked for about two days when they came out.
So let's get a little bit of, in case anybody else is maybe not on the internet too much like what's going on here.
What are we talking about?
Why are we talking about it now?
Yes, the USDA releases new dietary guidelines every five years.
And to do that before the new guidelines come out, they have a dietary guidelines advisory committee that reviews all of the existing research, any new research since the last guidelines were issued, and makes these scientific recommendations for potential changes in the guidelines.
And so that committee report came out at the end of December 2024.
And it's a joint effort between the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services.
And when that report comes out, it is actually also submitted to the public and available for public comment.
And so it's between that report and then the public comment that ultimately the USDA and HHS then author these new guidelines.
Now, what's, of course, interesting about this most recent evolution or this most recent release is that we've had a change in the administration between the committee's scientific report and then kind of the finalization of these guidelines that got released.
And so the new administration, you know, decided to accept and reject some things that they thought were more important or less important between this committee report and also the release of their guidelines.
And so what everyone saw this past week-ish is this release of, shall we say, an upside down pyramid with kind of the tagline of eat real food and definitely some more at least picture and text emphasis on animal foods than we've seen in previous years.
And I do want to point out that, if you look at the committee who wrote the most recent guidelines that just got released, not the committee report there are a lot of financial ties to the beef and dairy industry, which is a little bit LOL to me, because there's a lot of people who go on and on about the fact that okay, doctors are in bed with big pharma.
So where's all the outrage about the fact that these diet recommendations happen to be in bed with the big food industry players?
But I digress.
That's a different talk show.
Yeah, I know.
That's another podcast episode, I guess.
The other thing though, about this new upside down pyramid is it did cause a lot of people to talk about oh gosh, the old food pyramid that the USDA had.
Now it's important to know that that old food guide pyramid with the grains at the bottom went away in 2005.
It went to an updated version of the pyramid with like kind of these vertical stripes.
And any form of a pyramid went away in 2011 with MyPlate, which basically shows half of a plate with fruits and veggies and protein, et cetera.
I bring that up because 15 years ago, is when we switched to MyPlate.
And so sometimes when people are like, oh, thank God they finally updated the pyramid.
It's like, well, you know, where have you been?
Because you clearly weren't actually paying attention to the guidelines.
Yeah.
That's how bad at marketing they are.
It takes about 15 to 20 years for anybody to think they're paying attention, but they've missed so much in between those.
Cool.
Got it.
Okay.
That's good.
A good little background.
Let's jump right into our five practical takeaways from your review.
Do you want me to just go one at a time and we'll break them down?
Let's do it.
Cool.
All right.
So number one that you sent me, the practical relevance of the new guidelines is minimal.
Yeah.
Yeah, this was a big week for me Patrick, because this is the first week I have legitimately been asked about the USDA dietary guidelines in my career working in nutrition.
I mean, even at CrossFit.
I was involved in nutrition, of course, not full time or anything like that.
But then the last eight years just dedicated with Optimize Me Nutrition Only.
I've never been asked directly about the guidelines.
And I bring that up sort of in jest, but I bring it up because I do think it's really important to understand that the average American, and even the above average nutrition informed American, as our audience is, does not go to the guidelines for nutrition advice.
Right.
Yes, we have talked about them here on the podcast.
It's more because I try to untangle the idea that the government is trying to kill us.
But I never get these questions that are like you see.
You know, I noticed the guidelines move lentils faster from the vegetable category into the protein group.
How should I handle this?
You know, I never get those questions.
And so I think it's really relevant, because it's this main point that I would love for people to understand about the guidelines.
The problem is not the guidelines.
The problem is no one is following the guidelines.
And as much as I think this most recent version of the guidelines is a little bit goofy, from a science point of view, our nation's health would still be way better off if people followed them, including these new ones.
I mean for one.
The literal first main recommendation is the same as it's always been quote eat the right amount for you.
Continuing quote.
The calories you need depend on your age sex height, weight and level of activity.
Okay, 74% of Americans are overweight or obese, meaning their caloric needs are off.
So majority of people aren't meeting the first recommendation.
That's been there literally since day one of the guidelines.
Another example even within these new guidelines, they are still recommending five servings combined of fruits and veggies per day which, as we've said, a bunch 90 of Americans aren't doing.
So again, you know, I'm going to kind of point out some of where the science is a little bit silly in certain areas.
But, you know, these guidelines are going to have this big change in our nation's health.
The real relevance of these guidelines is not directing, let's say, our community's nutrition approach.
The real relevance of these guidelines tends to be that it influences school lunches and like, let's say, hospital programs, and maybe even how things can be marketed, like the front of packaging labeling that we've talked about.
So there is going to be some trickle-down effect.
I don't want to say that it's irrelevant.
But in our sphere, in my clients' demographic, it's way more about viral social media influence.
I've been asked way more about Glucose Goddess or Peta Urtia or Stacey Sims than anybody has ever asked about what the USDA says.
Yep.
And so you know it's like how powerful are these really for a lot of people's day-to-day application?
And, as we've discussed ad nauseum, it's really the food environment that is the big influencer for everyone, not the guidelines and not even quote.
You know the glucose goddess or whoever.
So until any administration can make real change in the food environment, these guidelines can almost say anything, and nothing changes to a significant degree.
And just as a silly aside, when I was reviewing the guidelines over the weekend, they made this statement about how their version is so different and has got all this new stuff in it.
And they did that because the last 10 versions of the guidelines have failed to reduce chronic disease to any significant degree.
And I just sort of love the hubris to think, oh, okay, your new set of guidelines is going to do it.
Okay, go ahead.
We'll see.
Yeah, it turns out the problem is in the guidelines, as you said.
Okay, good.
Takeaway number two there is the exact same limit on saturated fats, so the guidelines are not more pro-meat or dairy.
Yeah.
One of the main premises of the guidelines as a whole and which, to I think, a large degree is useful but also not that different from the last guidelines, is this premise that whole foods should be the default food recommendation.
So that is good.
Note, that's not really a difference from the last guidelines, but that's okay.
However, when we take a look at this new upside down pyramid, we've got steak cheese, red meat and whole milk really taking over the top left corner which, of course, is what everybody sees first reading, left to right.
And there's also places, as I mentioned in their text, where you can see their recommendations.
They're kind of pushing this more meat, full-fat animal products, like specifically calling out beef, tallow and butter for cooking as an example.
So the more animal-based pro-meat crowd seems to be fired up about this because at least again in pictures and talking points, this beef and dairy seems to be more encouraged than previous guidelines.
However, in the incorporate healthy fat section it says, quote in general, saturated fat consumption should not exceed 10 of total daily calories.
End quote.
That is the exact same guideline as it was before.
So it's not really an increase in animal products in the diet.
And, as before, most people will need to reduce their saturated fat in the diet to achieve this guideline.
Of course they need to reduce most everything in the diet because on average we're eating too much of everything.
Pick any calorie producing nutrient.
We probably need to eat less of it, including saturated fat.
But anyway, to demonstrate that this guideline really isn't a pro animal based diet or a pro saturated fat diet, which is our largest source of saturated fat 10 of calories in the diet.
Let's walk through an example using a 2000 calorie day diet.
10% of that ends up being about 22 grams of saturated fat.
That's really not that much.
That's really not that much.
That's about a cup of whole milk, a little bit more than a cup of whole milk, a tablespoon of butter and a palm-sized serving of 80-20 ground beef on the day.
So that's going to get you already to this 10% limit.
And that's assuming that no other foods in your diet have any saturated fat in them, which is not going to be true, because even things like olive oil have saturated fat.
So good luck trying to increase your full-fat dairy and beef To any significant degree if we're going to stay at 10 of calories in the diet.
So you might ask though, like okay well, if they're very pro beef and dairy, why didn't they increase that 10 caloric limit?
Well, they don't have the evidence to.
Then we go back to the scientific report.
It's like, yeah, they don't really don't have the evidence to be able to do that.
You know we've talked I know even recently we had kind of an episode about LDL cholesterol and heart disease risk and saturated fat.
And I don't want to kind of go through all of those points.
But I do want to make this broad point about the recommendation for calories for saturated fat to be about 10.
I think it's very level-headed, and I think it's a very logical reason why we end up there.
So let's just kind of walk through it.
If you end up eating the amount of protein that I recommend or slightly higher the one gram per pound that's so popular on social media and you don't do anything really crazy with your diet like you don't try to be high fat, you don't try to be high carb, you just eat a good amount of whole foods.
You eat this kind of 07 grams per pound of protein or higher, you're generally going to end up with a mixed, balanced-ish macronutrient diet where about 40 of the calories are coming from carbs.
30% of the calories are coming from fat and 30% of the calories are coming from protein.
Now it won't work out perfectly to those numbers, but it's going to be somewhere in this general ballpark of a mixed macronutrient diet.
From there, we have three types of fat.
We've got monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, and saturated.
So if you've got...
30% of calories in the diet coming from fat.
The idea that each one of those types of fat gets about 10 of calories is kind of a very logical, non extreme conclusion.
So I feel like we kind of keep running around and around. on the idea of saturated fat in the diet.
And it's just sort of like okay if we eat in a mixed balanced, macronutrient way, which is, I think, one of the best ways to eat, because it allows us to include a diversity of foods in the diet, which helps with sustainability, which helps us achieve all of our nutrient endpoints.
Besides saturated fat, we often will end up in this ballpark of 10 of calories coming from saturated fat.
So Main points here are one, the new guidelines don't actually change that level.
And two, in practical application, this is generally where it's going to kind of shake out anyway.
Got it.
When you get to the third pillar with folks, do you ever look specifically or do you spend a lot of time and effort looking at saturated fat?
Or is it again to your point?
Is it like once we get to that point and once we're eating this diverse array of foods, it sort of balances it out and we don't have to worry about it too much from there?
We definitely look at it.
We look at some other markers like fiber and saturated fat.
And just depending on kind of diets people have come out of.
Sometimes we will have to make some specific changes.
And so it can be a targeted approach at that point.
But generally, a lot of times we can end up being pretty good on this number without having to micromanage it.
Got it.
Okay, cool.
Takeaway number three, the new format is good in concept, but poor in execution.
What does that mean?
Yeah.
So one of the things I really do like about the nude guidelines, at least in concept, is that they have this 10-page summary of the guidelines.
And I do think just generally the USDA needs to do more printable, shareable stuff.
I mean, we all saw that.
You even mentioned...
You saw the new pyramid, you saw the stuff being shared.
Like 10 pages is really useful as a document if you want people talking about this thing and to try to get people understanding this thing.
And I appreciate the challenge of okay hey, just go make a 10 page document summarizing nutrition needs for the entire US.
Yep.
Some poor intern responsible for that.
Right.
I get it.
It's a pretty daunting challenge, but I love the attempt because that is actually what people would potentially look at.
You're certainly not going to get everyone to look at it, but if you want people to take a look at it, we got to do something simple, and we got to do something that is going to be read within a few minutes.
The last guidelines were just this single 164 page document which, to be honest, were quite well written, but people aren't reading that.
They're not even going to open it to go through the abstract and the summary.
So this is where having these things that are really, I don't know, eye catching or digestible, I guess pun intended I think are really useful.
And, I think, my plate.
You know, the showing of the plate and the showing what a plate looks like is quite good.
But the fact that nobody remembers it, I think also speaks to how little it was shared, right?
So we need more of that stuff.
People are too far removed from being nutrition literate or whatever, too busy in their lives to like dive into 164 page report.
And you know.
I also appreciate that USDA doesn't have the largest marketing budget, especially when we compare things to like supplements or any big food corporation.
But I assure you their budget's higher than mine.
And...
You know, we can do these things with these plates and these photos that really help people to understand what this stuff actually looks like.
And so I love the attempt to have something like that.
And I think we need more of that just generally.
Okay.
So good in concept.
Execution.
Okay, didn't do so well.
I mean, I'm reading through this 10 page document and I'm thinking do any of you actually work with clients?
Have you ever fielded a single question from a client that's trying to make a diet change?
I mean, of course the answer is no.
But the practical utility of this 10-page document is like nobody is going to actually use it.
Because, first of all, let me tell you how many people can tell you 10 of their calories in terms of saturated fat grams, the math that I went through earlier.
Let alone.
Okay, now I have this number of saturated fat grams, what foods in my diet would increase or decrease that?
I mean, less than 1% of the American population could do that, right?
So I would suggest at least not just putting out there okay, keep saturated fat to 10 of your calories, your diet.
Okay.
What is that in terms of grams?
Where are they going to find that information?
What foods increase or decrease that, right?
Like actually go through those steps for them.
Another example in this 10 page document The protein recommendation.
They actually have increased the protein recommendation from the RDA, which is fine.
I'm not totally convinced we need to do that for the non-active population, which is most of the US.
But nevertheless they increase the protein recommendation and they give it in terms of grams per kilogram.
Now, I appreciate that because that's how the scientific literature reports that.
Okay, how many Americans are going to know how to do the math, to get their weight into kilograms, to then do the math on the protein multiplier?
Like they just should have said, especially since we know that most people are sedentary.
Something like okay, 90 to 120 grams per day of protein is going to be great.
Based on these heights you know short, average and tall heights that would have been way more useful for somebody to actually put this into practice instead of grams per kilogram to a us audience like who are you talking to?
Okay, the whole grain serving.
They recommend two to four servings of whole grains.
What's a serving of whole grains?
How is a person supposed to know that?
If you're referring to the serving that's on the back of the nutrition label, okay, tell them that.
How do they know that it's a whole grain versus not a whole grain?
Like my God, if you're trying to make this thing useful, you need to think about the person who is using it.
And the person who's using it.
On average, A is not good at math and B certainly does not understand math in relation to nutrition.
So good intention.
Like that step, really poor at execution.
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Okay, let's keep going.
Number four, it was not written by anyone who understands nutrition science.
Yeah, I mean, I think it sort of builds on that last point.
But there are a couple of things that kind of made me smile, especially reading the 10-pager, besides the points that I already kind of point out.
First quote when cooking with or adding fats to meals, prioritize oils with essential fatty acids, such as olive oil.
Other options can include butter or beef tallow, end quote.
Okay, so basically, they're in this sentence talking about cooking, and they include in that prioritizing oils with essential fatty acids.
Okay, essential fatty acids are polyunsaturated fatty acids, which the authors actually don't like.
When you go into their supplemental scientific report, they discuss how unstable and how quickly they oxidize.
This is all of the stuff out there about seed oils.
But here in the summary, they are recommending to cook with them.
They also go on to say that olive oil is one of these examples that would prioritize oils with essential fatty acids.
No, olive oil is a good source of monounsaturated fatty acids, where the essential fatty acids are omega-6 and omega-3.
Both are, which polyunsaturated fatty acids.
So olive oil is not a good source of that.
So, I mean, the statement is just sort of like, huh?
Yeah.
What are you actually recommending here?
Another one I was reading through is they talk about this is actually a change in the last guidelines.
Is they recommend no added sugar?
Before they had kind of a certain low limit.
Now they're actually saying no added sugar.
And I'm all for cutting down on added sugar and processed food consumption, of course, as we've discussed, but it doesn't need to be zero.
And so they say, quote while no amount of added sugars or non-nutritive sweeteners is recommended or considered part of a healthy or nutritious diet, one meal should not contain no more than 10 grams of added sugars.
End quote.
I mean, it might not sound that silly, but it's funny to me to even bother with saying okay, no added sugar.
But it's in the same sentence of saying well, some.
Mm-hmm.
If you want to know why Americans are confused about what to eat, this is a great example.
We've got two different recommendations in the same sentence.
Don't have any, have up to 10 in one meal.
And so it's like I put that example in there, because no real nutrition scientists would say no added sugars, because essentially the added sugars are the same chemical composition as the sugars that are in your fruits and vegetables.
We know it doesn't have to go to zero.
Of course we want people to cut down on it, but like, don't say no.
And then some, I mean, what do you, what's the messaging here?
How is somebody supposed to enact this?
And so it's just, again, just kind of made me smirk a little bit.
It's like, okay, zero, zero thought went into that sentence.
So number three and number four.
I think number three was people seem to – or the people who wrote it seem to not have any experience with real-life nutrition.
And number four is it seems to be written by people with no nutrition science background.
Is that just the process?
Like the process of putting this thing together has so many different hands in it that, of course, the result of it is like this kind of mishmash of – opinions and and facts and and perspectives and and things that are important versus things that are important.
Is that just kind of like, should we expect anything different?
I guess is the question.
I think um, oh yeah, that's a great question.
That could probably be its own podcast.
Um Yeah, I think there's certainly going to be some of that.
There's no way that the person who's having the original thought or guidance is also the person designing the 10-page PDF.
I mean, you know, we've had errors in our social media published and we're two people, right?
So you can only imagine.
It is going to increase for sure.
I would hope though, a 10-pager that's going out to all of the United States would get a couple QCs.
Yeah.
More so than you and I are able to provide on our stuff.
Anyway, so I do think there is a little bit of that.
I also though, think and this is this is something that is a whole separate skill set is you do need people that are truly the science people, and truly science people are often not the communicators.
This doesn't necessarily excuse the whole fatty acid line in there.
But like they, when you tell like a true scientist or somebody who's very, you know, neck deep in nutrition science, to keep your saturated fat calories to 10 of the total, they're like sure got it.
They don't still work with clients.
They're so neck deep in understanding the studies that have looked at saturated fat contribution on a percent calories diet, but they're not working with clients because that's not their job.
So I do think there is this big chasm and what I think there are a lot of skilled people on social media trying to do, and that is to try to translate the complicated research into something.
Okay, What is this person actually going to do come Monday in the kitchen?
That's what I really love to try to help people with.
It's like, okay, we've got all these PubMed studies.
We've got all these really complicated ideas.
Like, what are we actually going to do?
And that is its own skill set.
And I certainly think we could have more of that kind of bridge the gap between what they're doing from a research point of view and then what they're doing to actually make this useful for the American public point of view.
Right on.
All right, last takeaway.
The appeal to more rigorous scientific evidence is commendable but poorly applied.
Yeah, you know, we've done a lot of these podcasts where we do go through a study and this one says this and this one doesn't say that.
I'm happy to do more of those.
But I kind of wanted to just hammer the broader point here, because some of that stuff just sort of gets into.
He said, she said
Hmm.
You know, there's a couple main premises they lay out for the guidelines, and one I mentioned earlier, and that is that they sort of are going to default to this idea that whole foods are always the more ideal food choice, which generally is okay.
At extremes we're going to have problems like a whole food carnivore diet is not better than a somewhat processed food level diet, if we're talking about, you know, kind of at caloric needs blah blah, blah.
But nevertheless, it is a pretty good general push and sentiment foundational idea.
But then their second big premise is that randomized control trials are the gold standard for science and there needs to be more of these high quality randomized control trials that really establish causal evidence specifically for disease outcomes like having heart disease or having cancer, to make any recommendations if the recommendation is not going to recommend these whole food default choices.
And so they really rely on that idea or concept that we need these more robust randomized control trials, especially in their saturated fat section, to basically say there isn't enough of this high quality research to suggest that saturated fat is a health problem.
Okay, so two kind of comments on that.
They are right in the sense of, yes, a lot of nutrition research really isn't that great.
And yes, it would be great to have these really large randomized control trials for years to establish clinical outcomes like death and disease, instead of a lot of the observational studies that we have.
But we have this thing called life and reality to deal with where...
You know large sample sizes.
Super controlled trials don't exist because otherwise healthy individuals aren't giving up two five, 10 years of their life to live in some super controlled trial for low to no pay.
So it's like a great talking point.
We need more high quality research.
And of course, every nutrition scientist out there is going, yes, we know.
But you know, if there's no studies that meet your criteria in 2025, you should probably pause and ask yourself why right?
This also means, then how would they have the evidence to make changes like to suggesting no sugar should be added, or in the case of we need more beef and butter in the diet?
Like if you're going to make this point that we don't have any good research, it cuts both ways.
Yeah.
And so of course, this is where it gets into the he said, she said part, but they cite plenty of low quality evidence to make their point.
And they also make it a point to bring up in these guidelines.
They're going to look at some quote emerging evidence, which of course are not large scale repeated human randomized control trials for a lengthy amount of time.
When it's quote emerging evidence,
So this is where it gets really goofy.
It's like I appreciate that you want to have this kind of standard of saying we're only accepting gold level science.
But it's like, yeah, that doesn't work for your case either.
You didn't apply that to yourself.
So again, that's kind of a great talking point for headlines, but it ultimately kind of shuts down the conclusion that they'd like to make in the science that they cite as well.
And so that's what I mean is like the science is kind of goofy.
It's like, okay.
Yeah.
But all in all, in summary, like I really don't think much changes here.
I think we've got this social media flurry for a couple weeks or two.
Some parties have some certain talking points to capture support or not, but no real change was going to happen.
I guess maybe my final takeaway although I didn't, you know, outline it as a sixth takeaway is, it's just like incredibly frustrating to me.
You know when you go through these reports.
Mind you, this had a 10 pager, a supplemental scientific report at 90 pages and an appendix that was over 400 pages.
You've got this list of highly qualified people, like multiple committees over multiple years, to put these things together, even if it's not done well.
The amount of spending that goes into it, not just the millions and millions that went into this evolution, but probably billions over the years of all of these different evolution of the guidelines.
It's just like, guys, this isn't it.
Like I don't really see much hope for change here until we actually change the modern food environment.
And so that's really where I would love for people to get more rallying around.
It's like not what is printed on the cover of the upside down pyramid, but who in the administration, or which administration, is actually going to change the modern food environment.
Really interesting.
The.
The note about emerging evidence reminds me of what we've talked about with cutting edge science.
Exactly.
It's they're trying to spin.
We're not really sure about this and do something that sounds more positive.
It's crazy.
If you are going to say that you are only going to take super well-powered, meaning tons of sample size, high quality, randomized controlled trials, let alone, I'm sure that they're going to say, of course, we want the results repeated because of course you need to see science repeated across independent parties.
I am going to tell you it cannot be emerging evidence.
Yeah.
It's going to be the tried and true basics, because that's the only thing that we've had enough time to look at time and time again.
So trying to weave in emerging evidence in the same idea of we only take super high quality stuff is just LOL.
Yeah.
I think.
Last question, which is just do you have any big takeaways at the fact that, for the first time ever somebody, or multiple people, asked you about the guidelines?
Is that a sign of a – is that a good sign?
Like, hey, maybe people are paying attention to these things.
Maybe they are asking questions.
Maybe they are trying to figure out okay.
Yeah, I know it says that and that's a little too science-y for me, but what does that actually mean?
Or is it just a sign of –
I don't know, just the noise everywhere about everything all the time now.
Yeah.
So Dr Jessica Nurick, she's got a very large following and she does a lot on politics and policy.
And I think she says it quite well, that Make America Healthy Again largely has the problem right.
We do have a chronic disease epidemic.
And I think from that standpoint, they have captured the attention of paying attention to it.
And then you know, she goes on to say how to fix.
It is wrong, as we've discussed.
You know it's not going to be with artificial dyes being eliminated like we have to cut down on processed food.
But there is, I think, more attention in the mainstream to what people are saying about food and the chronic disease epidemic.
And I don't want to say that the end justifies the means or anything, but I do think there is more attention to this and that potentially could be good, you know.
And again, I'm really, I'm really interested to see like, can anybody make a dent in the modern food environment?
Like the guidelines aren't going to spin me up.
Like what can we do to cut down on that?
And that's going to be where I could really rally behind and support something.
Yeah.
Do you think that that's the ultimate, that that should be the ultimate goal of something like you know every five years when this new guideline comes out?
Maybe the goal is this and it just perhaps fails at it which is to actually change behavior on the individual level.
Or, as you said before, where you kind of mentioned like a lot of this ends up trickling down to schools or hospitals.
But is it that it fails to even have the right aim or goal, which is like we talked about all the time actually changing individual behavior within the context that we find ourselves?
Yeah, I mean, I do think there's just a huge scope of what this is trying to do.
It is supposed to be giving directives to the American population on what's a generally healthy diet.
But then, in addition to that, it is also have these trickle down effects to all of these programs and setting regulations around how much sugar can be in foods that are then labeled healthy.
So sometimes I think it's almost like a scope problem.
Are you going to be the great person at coming up with these infographics for the gen pop but then also be like neck deep in understanding how we're doing front of packaging label for the code of federal regulations?
So it's just an enormous scope.
Um, i don't know that i have the best answer for that.
I i do think that there probably could be a little bit more push in the sense of of what we can really do for the American public to create a change.
And I think if we've learned anything over the last 10 evolutions of guidelines, that an updated guideline set is not it.
And that maybe at this point we can kind of recalibrate and be like okay, what really is the goal here?
Where do we have some power to make the change that will actually start creating a dent in these chronic disease outcomes, versus just sort of having more discussions about what the literature says about saturated fat and heart disease?
Yeah.
Fascinating.
Thank you for reading at EC so that I don't have to.
I always appreciate that.
All right.
So we just talked about the new dietary guidelines with the USDA.
Says Americans should be eating.
But there's another piece to this regulatory puzzle that came out last year as well.
The FDA's rules about what companies can actually label as quote unquote healthy.
So, as you're about to hear, the same pattern emerges that EC just broke down good intentions, questionable execution and the same fundamental problem that she laid out.
The real issue isn't what's written in the guidelines or printed on the labels.
It's that none of it matters without changing the actual food environment that we are all living in.
So let's pick it up from there.
We are going to talk today about an updated definition of what healthy means.
Should be pretty simple.
Simple?
Easy, quick.
We're going to cover a couple of topics.
We're going to talk about the old 1994 quote unquote healthy food label system, how it worked and its limitations.
We'll talk about the new changes in the FDA's definition and what they can mean for us as consumers.
And we're going to talk about whether labeling foods as quote unquote healthy actually impacts our choices and our eating habits.
So we're talking about some FDA regulations.
Beyond that, give us a little bit of context so that we know what we're doing here.
Yeah, it was really.
At the end of last year the FDA updated its final rule, its final definition on what defines quote healthy on a food label.
It actually fits pretty well.
We talked about some front of packaging label.
I feel like it was recently, but I went back, I think it was August.
So I guess not that recently um, but yeah, i mean, i think it fits pretty well with some of the stuff that they're trying to do.
What looks like at that labeling, and i think it's pretty relevant to our listeners.
Right, what defines healthy?
But yeah, as you kind of hinted at, i think this is one of these things that sounds so simple but there's just like shades of gray and nuance and so let's get into it.
Nothing around nutrition can be simple, kind of i know, you just can't.
I know, not even a label, Not even a label.
Okay.
So I said right at the top there, there was an old system from the mid-90s.
Maybe let's start there.
Give us a sense of even what that was before we talk about what the changes are going to be.
Yeah.
So the 1994 rule really looked at specific nutrient levels.
And one of the ways to be called healthy is it had to have limits on, let's say, total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium.
So these were like these nutrients of concern that they're trying to limit.
In addition to that, they have like nutrients that they were trying to encourage.
So, in addition to having lower levels of those, they wanted to have at least 10 percent of nutrients like vitamin a, vitamin c, calcium and iron, trying to show that hey, we've got low levels of these things that we want to cut back on and we got higher levels of things that we need more of in the diet.
Know, it's good that they weren't just looking at just sodium or just cholesterol and they were looking at a collection of markers or collection of nutrient values.
But i would say it's a little bit compartmentalized, just sort of thinking about food as its individual constituents.
Now, of course, some things have changed since 1994.
It's kind of a trip thinking about this like okay, a few years later here um, some of the things that have changed is they have added Added sugars to food labels.
So before it just used to show total sugars, which would combine things like the natural sugar occurring in strawberries and as well as added sugar.
Well, now they will just delineate that out, so you can truly see what's truly added versus what's naturally occurring.
So that's been a big change kind of in a realization and push within food, just our guidelines and our food labels.
There's also been some realization that these old rules were kind of restrictive because they were foods that are truly healthy that weren't allowed to be called healthy.
An example would be salmon because of its fat content.
And then there were some foods that aren't so healthy but were allowed to be called healthy, like sweetened yogurts.
Just the way that the kind of looking at the individual nutrient levels pieces shook out.
And then they've also done things where we don't actually require people to put vitamin A and vitamin C.
These were nutrients of concern, but now we've sort of come to the place where those aren't really deficient in people, in Americans.
And so now we're more concerned about things like potassium and vitamin D, And so those are now new requirements.
So all of these kind of changes have been happening.
But really the big push that's been a big change, and this is even true in the guidelines is they're really trying to make this push for a dietary pattern.
We talked about this with the Mediterranean Diet Podcast, but it's this idea that, like no one, food makes or breaks your diet.
Instead, we want to sort of see a collection of foods and a collection of their frequency and occurrence to determine the health of a diet.
So it was all of these sort of changes, which of course, you know, have happened over 30 years.
But they're like, huh, let's go ahead and update it.
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So, just so I'm clear, because you mentioned the episode we did on labeling, is this literally the foods that are allowed to put the word healthy on the label, versus foods that aren't allowed because they don't maybe fit into the whatever criteria?
Is that like literally as literal as we're getting here, right?
Yeah, just to use the word, this is a healthy food.
Now, this would be separate in addition to the packaging label that we discussed before.
Maybe they would list saturated fat and stuff, but this would just to be able to use the word healthy.
Yes.
Got it.
OK, cool.
So what is the new system then?
And when does it when can we start to expect it if we're not if it's not already in circulation?
When do we expect it to be?
Yeah, I think the final rule came out at the end of last year and they're required to put it into place at the end of February, which has passed.
But there has been, as you know, some shakeups with the administration that some stuff is on hold.
So when exactly it will be rolled out might be end of March. we shall see.
But yeah, it's supposed to be kind of right now that people are abiding to this new rule on healthy.
And what this new rule is is no surprise.
They're incorporating, kind of all of those changes that I've just mentioned.
And the first one goes back to that idea about a healthy dietary pattern.
They want the food it's not going to be that's.
This is not going to sound like rocket science, but it is in terms of kind of food regulations.
They want the food product to actually include some portion of the food group that they're trying to promote.
So if you have a dairy product, they actually want that product to include some dairy.
Not just some sort of like, you know, flavoring and sugar and processed powder.
You know, they actually wanted to have some dairy in there.
Now this is going to be a great example of how these regulations get just too cumbersome for people to really use in their life.
But they set limits on, OK, there has to be a certain amount of this food in the food product.
So if we take dairy, for example, you have to have a two thirds cup equivalent.
If you think about different dairy products, like a cup of milk and an ounce of cheese, those might be considered equivalent, because no one sits down to a cup of cheese.
Maybe some people do, but it's just, you know what I mean?
There's going to be these different serving sizes kind of based on the type of product it is.
And so they look at things in terms of cup equivalents.
And so if you want to have a healthy dairy product, you're going to have to have a two thirds cup equivalent of dairy in that food, such that it actually is representative of the dairy food group.
And this is, again, pushing people towards eating foods.
And that's really what they recognized about the old system that yeah, they could cut out some saturated fat or they could cut down on the sodium.
But then these food manufacturers could basically just fortify it almost out of multivitamin, if you will to the food product, instead of actually having real food in it.
And ultimately you'd still have these kind of like calorically dense foods.
So this is the way that they're trying to push us towards healthy food, which I think, conceptually at least, is great.
Now, in addition to the having this food as part of the food product, they still also have those other limitations on those nutrients of concern, which are now just added sugar, sodium and saturated fat.
So they've removed total fat they're just looking at.
Okay, make sure that there's not too much of the added sugar, not too much of the sodium and not too much of the saturated fat.
In addition to having some real food in there, i should also mention what we've been talking about so far is really for food products.
All of the foods that I think our audience classically thinks of as healthy or that we preach so much about, like real vegetables and real fruits and real whole grains that are just, you know, one single ingredient, like apple or like broccoli those, by default, are already considered healthy.
And they also allow things that are, let's say, very minimally processed, frozen strawberries that are just strawberries, right?
Or dried beans.
They're also allowing those to be considered healthy.
Now I think what's really interesting about that?
All of those latter foods I just described, just strawberries or just frozen strawberries.
They often don't have labels on them because they oftentimes don't come in packaging right.
And so I think it's just sort of interesting that we have all of these foods that are already healthy and they don't really need a label.
Why are we spending so much time perfecting what healthy is, instead of spending that time and resources to direct people towards eating those foods?
We've got all of these foods that don't actually really need a label.
Don't even have a label on them.
They're what we want people to eat.
Instead, we're in the weeds of like okay well, how much dairy product is going to be in this specific one that we can now put the label on?
You mentioned the food manufacturers finding the loopholes maybe in the old system to be able to continue to put healthy on there.
Do you imagine that that will just happen again with whatever these new rules are?
Is it just another speed bump on the way to more unhealthy food being labeled as healthy?
I think it's going to be harder because, again, they have to have this food amount in the food.
So they kind of have to have real dairy or they have to have real fruit in some type of fruit snack.
It certainly will be harder than just to be some sort of concoction.
But I still think, when we look at these products, we're going to see a much higher caloric density than the foods that I just described the fruits and veggies that often don't come with a label at all.
And so, yeah, how much of a change this is really going to make?
I don't I don't know.
I want to get to a little bit more about the change that this might make.
Before we do though, you mentioned we did do an episode on labeling.
I assume this, and maybe not, maybe I shouldn't assume that, but these things were done in tandem.
In other words, like we're moving in the same direction and we're making rules that reflect each other, or not.
Are these reflective of each other?
That the labels that we talked about in this new sort of quote unquote healthy label.
Yeah, it does seem like they are trying to make them congruent with one another.
So what we talked about with the front of packaging label is they haven't set the final rule.
They're allowing public comments through May.
As all of these processes go, they're pretty long to get to.
But what they were coming to is a decision that, in addition to the nutrition label that's on the back, on the front of the packaging label, there would be some sort of box that highlights just saturated fat, sodium and added sugars and It would give the percent of the recommended daily allowance that the person is getting from a serving.
And then it would also have these qualitative terms like high, medium, or low.
So the person would see on the front of the box, oh, wow, this thing is high in saturated fat.
It's giving me 25 of my daily needs, or something like that.
Now, having the healthy label sort of also have something to do with saturated fat, added sugars and sodium is good.
There's some congruence there.
The healthy label also means again that they have some type of real food in the product beyond kind of limiting those nutrients.
But I do think it's good that they're going to have some parallels there, so it's not just like the healthy label is totally random and unrelated to the box.
That's on the front.
I think that's a good thing and yeah, there's some parallels there.
But we'll see if that front of packaging label is passed and when it becomes a requirement okay.
Then the million dollar question does any of this matter?
Does any of it matter?
The new rules in terms of what people eat, in terms of improving diets, improving a country's worth of diet Yeah, I mean, I kind of hinted this.
I don't know how much this is going to do.
Even when I was reading the final rule, which is a real page turner for defining healthy.
Even within that rule, the FDA is saying you can't live and die by this healthy label, that any food can be part of a healthy diet and you shouldn't make all of your selections for your diet based on whether or not it has the healthy label.
So the FDA knows that.
You know, the whole diet determines the health of it, and the presence or absence of one food can't tell us much about the whole diet.
I mean, there are some healthy diets that include chocolate chip cookies and there are unhealthy diets that include chocolate chip cookies.
Right,
So they know this stuff and they know it's much more comprehensive than just sort of slapping.
A healthy label on the front of it.
And so it makes me pause a little bit, because it's like how many different labels and information do we already have on packaging?
Like the back label already has so much information on it.
Then we have that front of packaging label that we discussed.
Then we have other organizations out there, like the Whole30 or Paleo Certified or Keto, that also get their check marks on the front.
And I'm just sort of thinking, like, I don't really know that this is doing anything.
How many more labels do we need on these boxes and bags of processed stuff so that we cut back on it?
Like, I just am very skeptical that another label is going to do it.
And I appreciate that nutrition change habits in small steps and that maybe the nutrition label or the healthy label starts to get people a little bit interested.
I think typically the people that are looking at nutrition labels are the ones that are kind of already on their way.
They've already kind of made up their mind they want to change.
And so maybe you could argue it's a value for them.
But I'm just sort of like when we look at a big, broad population change.
Is now the word healthy on the front really going to be this miraculous cure for our chronic disease epidemic?
I don't know.
So that's one big thought.
The other big thought I had was, Well, no wonder people are confused about nutrition.
Here we have the government putting healthy on labels as a defining term.
And then they also readily admit that a healthy diet isn't defined by eating the foods that have the healthy label on the front of it.
And guess what?
I totally sympathize with their cause because food is complex and it's a mixture of nutrients and it depends on all the foods.
And I get that.
I certainly wouldn't want to be in charge on saying yes or no to what's healthy or not.
But it does sort of make me smile a little bit.
It's like no wonder everyone is confused about nutrition because people at the top of this whole system are saying hey, let's put this label on the thing.
But but the label doesn't really mean everything.
And you really have to think about other things and all that stuff.
And so sometimes again, I'm like I don't know that this is really going to be the solution, if we can't even really come up with something that's kind of black or white and easy for the lay person to use.
Yeah.
And we've talked about that a little bit, but maybe remind us what, In this realm, in terms of helping people understand or communicating something that is admittedly complex as simply as possible, so that people can make slightly better decisions over time, what are your recommendations?
What would your recommendations be?
How do you think about it?
Yeah, i mean to go from a labeling point of view.
I do like kind of this ultra processed food categorization that we've talked about before and really they break food down into four different groups.
Group one is kind of the unprocessed stuff the fruits, the veggies, the meat, the eggs.
Group two is just a little bit of extension of shelf life, things like olive oil or butter, that type of processing.
Group three is going to have a few ingredients, maybe like a jam, where it's just the fruit and the sugar.
But then group four is this ultra process is what they call, but it's what I mean when I say process, ultra process stuff that has all the additives that you know really make these foods addictive.
The stuff that we couldn't make in our own kitchen, like nobody can make Doritos in their own kitchen, right.
That falls under the group four.
And I think I think that grouping, even though they look at the ingredients and that's what defines them into putting them into the groups, I think what's good about this grouping is what falls under group four also are the foods that our behavior really changes around.
Again, that addictive nature, we tend to overeat them, we tend not to have control.
And so I would be okay with putting that type of label on those foods, like hey, this is ultra processed.
Now, Again, I don't think a label is going to do it.
I think in addition to having a label that follows that kind of nomenclature more than looking at necessarily saturated fat or added sugar, in addition to that, we also need to change the environment.
Because I don't think it's just going to be a label thing.
I think it'd be really interesting... Now, the grocers are not going to like this at all.
It'd be really interesting if we had the grocery store set up in a way where the volume of foods that are truly healthy reflect the volume of which they should be in the diet.
So let's just sort of say 80 to 90% of the store is the whole unprocessed stuff.
And then 10 to 20% of the store is the ultra processed stuff.
And the ultra processed stuff is all together in one section.
And it's sort of like, hey, these are the food products that we have to minimize.
Hey, here's the healthy foods that you should really encourage and stuff like that.
Now, of course they're not going to like that, because they get a lot of money off of ultra-process and that's what sells and that's what people want.
But I really don't see it as the label is going to change.
It has to be maybe a label, in addition to an environmental change, to really push people towards consuming more of the foods that we should be making it easier for them to consume it.
At the end of the day, is this just a way to try to, in your mind, regulate the processed foods from saying something that they're not right?
Like I understand like okay, it's got to do this, we've got to do this, it has to be this.
But really, at the end of the day, isn't it just like?
Isn't all of this just like?
Stop calling it healthy?
Like to me, that's what it sounds like, but I can't tell you to stop calling it healthy, so I have to make rules that you have to follow in order to call it healthy.
It's to me.
It just feels like it just it's just.
Please, stop doing this.
And here are some rules.
Yeah no, I agree.
It's like, oh my gosh.
I can't imagine the time, the resources, the money that has gone into defining healthy since 1994.
And I'm just sort of like, why don't we just organize the grocery store differently?
Why don't we just take away the snack foods from checkouts?
Why again, when we walk into a best buy or home goods store, is there?
It's overflowing with all of this stuff like, keep changing all the labels you want, and you are right that it's.
Maybe, like you know, the government can't really restrict the you know, the sale of products.
They can't tell best buy to stop selling snickers bar at the checkout, right?
So this is the best they can do and they're going to keep refining their labels and that's sort of this futile task right, it's just this.
Now, what's what is unfortunate is or i know we've talked about this before too um, You know, I do strongly believe that people can have ultra processed food in their diet.
And I would even argue that they should have some level of them, because we like them and they are good.
And so this is what's also gets a little bit problematic with even restricting stuff and trying to pull it out of the environment is, I think we should be allowed to have cake?
I think we should be allowed to have cookies.
It's just okay.
Can we try another solution besides just another red label on the box or bag in hopes that that's really going to do anything?
All right.
Thank you, EC.
All right.
So the good news in all of this and those couple conversations we just listened to you don't need to wait for the next set of guidelines or a better labeling system to take action and improve your health.
You already have everything you need.
The knowledge, the ability to make choices, the agency to change your environment, starting with your own kitchen.
But here's the even better news.
These systems aren't just broken.
They're just noise.
The guidelines, the labels, the endless debates about saturated fat or added sugar or how much protein.
It's all just more chatter in an already deafening conversation about nutrition.
And that's Quite frankly, really why I value these conversations with EC, not only the ones we just listened to and the conversations that EC has come on to Chasing Excellence to have with us, but also all of the episodes that we've put out on the Consistency Project podcast.
They cut through all the noise and bring you back to what actually matters just eating whole foods in the proper amounts, the boring basics.
Make simple choices more often than you don't.
That's it.
That's the whole game.
That's the nutrition game in a nutshell.
Nutshell.
Nutrition jokes.
The clearer you get on that, the easier it becomes to ignore everything else.
Everything on social media, every press release, every article that claims that scientists warn and researchers warn because ultimately that's all it is is just noise.
You have full permission.
You have my full permission, my friends, to shut it all out.
All right.
So if you want more of that clarity again, Consistency Project Podcast or go to 3pillarsmethodcom learn more about the app that EC built.
Thank you to EC for letting us share these conversations.
Thank you to you.
And we'll be back soon.
Thank you so very much for tuning into the show this week.
Two quick things before you go.
First, if you want even more from this episode, go check out the full 5-3-1 breakdown.
We give you The five big ideas from the episode three, reflection questions to help you process it all and one key takeaway that you can put into action right now.
The link is in the show notes.
The second thing, while you're there, check out the Chase Club.
It's our premium membership, where we include bonus content, ad-free episodes and a brand new Chase Tracker app.
Check it all out at chasingexcellence.email.
