The 2015 Us Dietary Guidelines – Ending the 35% Limit on Total Dietary Fat

Samuel Levy - 113431051

Professor Miller

HES 2823

June 30th, 2019

HES - Article #3 Review

“The 2015 US Dietary Guidelines – Ending the 35% Limit on Total Dietary Fat”

By: Dariush Mozaffarian and David S. Ludwig

Reviewed by: Samuel Levy

INTRODUCTION:

        After analyzing the nutritional journal article written by Dariush Mozaffarian and David S. Ludwig, titled “The 2015 US Dietary Guidelines – Ending the 35% Limit on Total Dietary Fat,” it is clear that the author’s achieved their goal of questioning and making changes to the guidelines/regulations that surround the “Dietary Guidelines for Americans” (Mozaffarian and Ludwig, “The 2015 US Dietary Guidelines – Ending the 35% Limit on Total Dietary Fat” pg. 1). With that being said, it is important to understand just how much influence and guidance the “Dietary Guidelines for Americans,” brings to the countries military, schools, and agricultural production (Mozaffarian and Ludwig, “The 2015 US Dietary Guidelines – Ending the 35% Limit on Total Dietary Fat” pg. 1). Throughout the rest of the journal article, the authors explain how scientists and the DGAC, or Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, worked together to formulate a report with factual evidence to new nutritional information critical to the “Dietary Guidelines for Americans.” The next section of my article review will cover how the DGAC and scientists used different experiments and methods to come to a factual result that needed to be implemented within the Dietary Guidelines, along with the changes that were made to the already existing report.

METHODS:

1. Although the authors of the article do not fully explain how, the DGAC and scientist team came to the conclusion that cholesterol was a “nutrient of concern,” which I will explain the results in more detail in part A below (Mozaffarian and Ludwig, “The 2015 US Dietary Guidelines – Ending the 35% Limit on Total Dietary Fat” pg. 1).
2. Through experiments with different healthful food based diet programs, the DGAC used this to experiment whether fat should be a nutrient of concern or not, I will again explain the results of this in more detail in part B below (Mozaffarian and Ludwig, “The 2015 US Dietary Guidelines – Ending the 35% Limit on Total Dietary Fat” pg. 1).
3. The third, final, and arguably most important experiment that the DGAC made was the one surrounding our class’s Lesson 5 over Fats, and specifically how lipids work with fats and how they work with carbs. The results will be discussed in part C below (Mozaffarian and Ludwig, “The 2015 US Dietary Guidelines – Ending the 35% Limit on Total Dietary Fat” pg. 2).

RESULTS:

1. The DGAC and the scientist team came to the conclusion that cholesterol was a “nutrient for concern,” within the Dietary Guidelines, due to the fact that there was zero scientific evidence that supported cholesterol serves “clinical cardiovascular events” in any way (Mozaffarian and Ludwig, “The 2015 US Dietary Guidelines – Ending the 35% Limit on Total Dietary Fat” pg. 1).
2. The next experiment that was conducted surrounded what was considered to be healthful-food based diets and came to the conclusion that dietary advice should be focused on optimizing types of dietary fat and not total fat consumption because there is no scientific proof that the two are correlated (Mozaffarian and Ludwig, “The 2015 US Dietary Guidelines – Ending the 35% Limit on Total Dietary Fat” pg. 1).
3. The final experiment came to the most overwhelming result of them all and covers the title of the article with its results. The results of the experiment resulted in a nutritional discovery that had not been found in over forty years. This idea that carbs contained fewer calories per gram than fat does was a theoretical idea until it was factual blown when this article was published (Mozaffarian and Ludwig, “The 2015 US Dietary Guidelines – Ending the 35% Limit on Total Dietary Fat” pg. 2). Fat contains more calories per gram than carbs do and therefore, caused the Dietary Guidelines to end the limit on total dietary fat.

CONCLUSION:

        All in all, it is clear that there were some updates that needed to be made to the Dietary Guidlines which influences and leads countless of Americans in their diets whether it be in the school system, military, or even the agricultural production of the food itself. The main changes coming from the fact that the DGAC found that there should be no limit on dietary fats which was originally set at 35%, but rather, base the evidence off of the health effects. The experiments done by the DGAC in support of these new findings helped create new and effective Dietary Guidelines for the American people and for all the groups it serves. With all that being said, here are my two takeaways from this article.