DGAC Shows Plant-Based Diets Beat Animal Products for Health Promotion, Disease Prevention, Sustainability

Your health is another reason to reduce the meat in your diet! Here's an article from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine about recent findings from the DGAC.

WASHINGTON—The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine praises some of the recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC), which highlights the value of plant-based diets for Americans – both for health and environmental impact. Vegetarian and vegan diets are clearly established through research as a powerful way to prevent obesity, diabetes, and chronic disease.

Doctors and dietitians with the Physicians Committee commend the report for stating: “The major findings regarding sustainable diets were that a diet higher in plant-based foods, such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds, and lower in calories and animal based foods is more health promoting and is associated with less environmental impact than is the current U.S. diet.”

Previous advisory panels have noted the value of vegetarian diets, but these recommendations have been expanded to specifically demonstrate how a vegetarian diet reduces the risk of many types of chronic disease. The current language recommending vegetarian dietary patterns is the strongest to date.

But the report doesn’t have strong enough language warning against the consumption of meat products. “Lean meat, processed meat, red meat – all meat – causes disease,” says Neal Barnard, M.D., Physicians Committee president. “The same can be said for low-fat dairy products.”

The report has also reversed decades of warnings against cholesterol. Decades of science have conclusively linked dietary cholesterol to cardiovascular disease, which kills nearly 2,200 Americans daily. The Physicians Committee is urging the USDA and DHHS to exercise its authority to reiterate prior federal recommendations that Americans limit their cholesterol intake.

In a petition filed today to the USDA and DHHS, the doctors group asks that the DGAC’s findings stating that “[c]holesterol is not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption,” be disregarded because the DGAC deferred entirely to a 2013 report by the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology and one meta-analysis of egg consumption. The reliance on the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology report does not comply with the spirit of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which sets standards for bias among federal advisory committees.

The petition states: “In appearing to exonerate dietary cholesterol, the DGAC further confuses an already bewildered general public, the very group the Dietary Guidelines are supposed to benefit. See 7 U.S.C. § 5341(a). The average American does not differentiate fat from cholesterol, or dietary cholesterol from blood cholesterol. To suggest that cholesterol in foods is not a problem will lead many to imagine that fatty foods or an elevated blood cholesterol level carry no risk—two potentially disastrous notions.”

Note: this article is from: http://www.pcrm.org/media/news/dietary-guidelines-plant-based-promotion#.VSFbabuXGyM.email

New Diet Guidelines Might Pull Back From Meat

Where’s the beef?

A panel that advises the Agriculture Department appears set to recommend that you be told not only what foods are better for your own health, but also for the environment. That means that when the latest version of the government’s dietary guidelines comes out, it may push even harder than it has in recent years for people to choose more fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains and other plant-based foods — at the expense of meat.

The beef and agriculture industries are crying foul, saying an environmental agenda has no place in what has always been a practical blueprint for a healthy lifestyle.

The advisory panel has been discussing the idea of sustainability in public meetings, indicating that its recommendations, expected early this year, may address the environment. A draft recommendation circulated last month said a sustainable diet helps ensure food access for both the current population and future generations.

A dietary pattern higher in plant-based foods and lower in animal-based foods is “more health promoting and is associated with lesser environmental impact than is the current average U.S. diet,” the draft said.

That appears to take at least partial aim at the beef industry. A study by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year said raising beef for the American dinner table is more harmful to the environment than other meat industries such as pork and chicken.

The study said that compared with other popular animal proteins, beef produces more heat-trapping gases per calorie, puts out more water-polluting nitrogen, takes more water for irrigation and uses more land.

As the advisory committee has discussed the idea, doctors and academics on the panel have framed sustainability in terms of conserving food resources and also what are the healthiest foods. There is “compatibility and overlap” between what’s good for health and good for the environment, the panel says.

Once the recommendations are made, the Agriculture and Health and Human Services departments will craft the final dietary guidelines, expected about a year from now. Published every five years, the guidelines are the basis for USDA’s “My Plate” icon that replaced the well-known food pyramid in 2010 and is designed to help Americans with healthy eating. Guidelines will also be integrated into school lunch meal patterns and other federal eating programs.

The meat industry has fought for years to ensure that the dietary guidelines do not call for eating less meat. The guidelines now recommend eating lean meats instead of reducing meat altogether. But another draft discussed at the panel’s Dec. 15 meeting says a healthy dietary pattern includes fewer “red and processed meats.”

In response, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association sent out a statement by doctor and cattle producer Richard Thorpe calling the committee biased and the meat recommendation absurd. He said lean beef has a role in healthy diets.

Objections are coming from Congress, too.

A massive year-end spending bill enacted last month noted the advisory committee’s interest in the environment and directed Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack “to only include nutrition and dietary information, not extraneous factors” in final guidelines. Congress often uses such non-binding directions to put a department on notice that lawmakers will push back if the executive branch moves forward.

Environmentalists are pushing the committee and the government to go the route being considered.

"We need to make sure our diets are in alignment with our natural resources and the need to reduce climate change," said Kari Hamerschlag of the advocacy group Friends of the Earth.

Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest said the idea of broader guidelines isn’t unprecedented. They have already been shaped to address physical activity and food safety, he said.

"You don’t want to recommend a diet that is going to poison the planet," he said.

Article by the Associated Press, published at: https://www.yahoo.com/health/new-diet-guidelines-might-pull-back-from-meat-106931992162.html