The ever prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has just published an article entitled, "The 2015 US Dietary Guidelines - Lifting the Ban on Total Dietary Fat." In this article, authors Mozaffarian and Ludwig, from Tufts and Boston Children's Hospital, respectively, call on the USDA to remove the upper limit on dietary fat consumption when crafting the new, 2015 version of our nation's Dietary Guidelines. All this in response to the recommendations of the recent Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee report, an evidenced based review of what the science actually says. OMG. We have certainly come a long way from the how-low-can-fat-go recommendations of yesteryear.
But what is a mother to do? How do we, as mothers, process this sort of scientific paper into our daily meal plans for our families? After growing up on skim milk and fat-free yogurt, how do we move towards making friends with fat again? And, can we trust the USDA's guidelines, when we know they have already taken our collective waistlines in the wrong direction?
Let's help each other go back to vintage eating. Real food. More fat. After all, do we really need a government agency involved in our grocery shopping? Eat what your great-great grandmother would have eaten in times of abundance. It can be fun to completely ignore the processed food industry -- all of their products, their packaging, their marketing, their nonsense. It will make you feel powerful!
For those who want more, here is the concluding paragraph from Mozaffarian and Ludwig:
"The limit on total fat presents an obstacle to sensible change, promoting harmful low-fat foods, undermining attempts to limit intakes of refined starch and added sugar, and discouraging the restaurant and food industry from providing products higher in healthful fats. It is time for the US Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services to develop the proper signage, public health messages, and other educational efforts to help people understand that limiting total fat does not produce any meaningful health benefits and that increasing healthful fats, including more than 35% of calories, has documented health benefits. Based on the strengths of accumulated new scientific evidence and consistent with the new DGAC report, a restructuring of national nutritional policy is warranted to move away from total fat reduction and toward healthy food choices, including those higher in healthful fats."