Guidance from health and human services secretary contradicts decades of dietary recommendations
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health and human services secretary, is planning to issue guidance encouraging Americans to eat more saturated fats, contradicting decades of dietary recommendations and alarming experts.
“My response and sort of counsel to myself was to stay calm, and let’s see what happens, because there was no indication given as to how, why, when this potential shift would occur,” said Cheryl Anderson, an American Heart Association board member and professor at the University of California, San Diego’s school of public health and human longevity science.
“The recommendation around saturated fat has been one of the most consistent recommendations since the first edition of the dietary guidelines.”
While Ronald Krauss, a professor of pediatrics and medicine at the University of California, San Francisco who has researched saturated fats extensively, found that saturated fats may be less harmful than previously thought, he believes if “[Kennedy] is actually going to go out and say, we should be eating more saturated fat, I think that’s really the wrong message”.
The problem, as with everything, is that people insist on seeing everything as black and white, true and false, zero sum.
Some saturated fats aren’t going to kill you, and some things that are healthy in the aggregate, also have negatives (I love spinach, and it’s healthy, but it’s got a lot of oxalic acid).
But people will never, ever understand nuance and moderation so it’s just going to be this stupid back and forth forever, until we die of too much or too little anyway.
Yeah, I keep seeing articles reacting to what he said, but not seeing full quotes. If it means using actual animal fats versus some lab creation meant to replace sat fats, then I guess it makes sense. Think we have to just wait and see.
I think it’s obvious though. Guy’s a meat eater. He thinks meat and animal product are a good part of a diet. If the guidance comes out and says eating these meats sparingly as part of a balanced diet can be beneficial, well, yeah, duh, as with everything.
Don’t get me wrong, not defending rfk either, this will lead to all kinds of problems as people even eat politically these days. My own family is on the animal fat train, after being on the coconut oil train, after being on the avocado oil train…
Maybe instead of one fad after another, you just moderate and enjoy (clearly projecting here).
Yeah, and it may sound dumb, but I try not to worry about what cancer I’ll end up with. I’m gonna get some cancer. I eat, my body lets me knows what’s good and what’s not, and I try not to let politics determine my meal, well said.