RFK Jr to urge Americans to eat more saturated fats, alarming health experts
7mon 25d ago by lemmy.world/u/MicroWave in health from www.theguardian.com
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”.
Money, it's because of money. Some junk food conglomerate stuffed some dollar bills in the space where his brain is supposed to be
The worm was a lobbyist who made room for more money
Junkfood mostly uses polyunsaturated fats like sunflower oil though. Diary and meat industries are candidates though.
I think RFK Jr and all Trump party officials should follow this advice to the letter.
Not fast enough.
Every heart beat counts!
That guy is the Jim Cramer of health advice.
Jim Cramer's methods for getting out of crippling debt can be useful for people who are in crippling debt. His recommendations for people who are out of debt trying to grow their wealth, are totally useless. But some of his advice is good for a certain audience.
I think the only reasonable health above I've heard from RFK, towards ANY audience, is "exercise is good". Everything else is totally bonkers.
More like John Cramer.
More like Cosmo Kramer.
Americans should stop listening to the man with brain worms.
I blame Futurama for giving us unrealistic expectations of how competent a worm-riddled idiot would be.
smh you think i have a choice?
The only people still stupid enough to listen to this asshole aren't the ones I'm going to miss.
This will be the new Herman Cain Award.
Do we give it to him or the brain worms? It's hard to say who gets credit, him and his greed, or the pesky little guys in his brain.
It's fine, I wasn't going to listen anyway.
Look on the bright side: at least he didn't recommend trans fats (and we all know it's not because they're unhealthy).
Gotta prop up that lagging beef industry.
As if they need more encouragement.
Americans consume about 50 billion hamburgers annually…
...each?
What's your burger count at? I'm up to 20.
~90 for the year so far. But far, FAR more tacos. That's easily 400+.
Those are rookie numbers. You gotta get those numbers up.
One last year. Never again. I make it myself if i crave one, which was also last year.
But the quick variant (slice of bread, cut onion, patty, spice, in the oven) is a nice too-lazy-to-cook food.
And, what?
Yeah but not because the goddamn guvment tells us to for our HEALTH
I went to the doctor for the first time in a decade cause I didn't have insurance (thanks politicians, you fucking suck).
He told me I had high cholesterol and to keep saturated fat below 10g a day. I never knew the guideline is 20g and under.
It's actually pretty tough to keep below 10g a day without doing a lot of work. But my cholesterol improved drastically in just a month, and I lost 9 lbs.
I refuse to believe RFK Jr and his conspiracy theories and will use the EVIDENCE from hundreds of years to make my health decisions.
The recommendation around saturated fat has been one of the most consistent recommendations since the first edition of the dietary guidelines.
Weren't the same dietary guidelines telling everyone to stuff themselves full of sugars for decades?
Only if you call eleven servings of bread per day "stuffing" yourself...
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.
It would be nice if there was nobody dumb enough to anything this guy says
I enjoy eating fish more than another can of Spam.
He can still go fuck himself.
I had a heart attack about 6 weeks ago. They put a stent in one of my arteries on the left side of my heart. All of my numbers that they look at were in normal range, ldl, a1c, triglycerides, etc. My blood pressure was normal and my heart beat runs low. No indication that I have heart disease. I rarely eat beef, mostly chicken and lean cuts of pork. I believe it was caused by stress and inflammation. To much salt in food is what causes the excess inflammation. Food manufacturers and the restaurant industry use way to much salt, it's crazy how much some items have. These idiots in Washington don't really care about us, they actually want to reduce the population in this country, because less people are easier to control. The numbers aren't on their side right now. It's all in the project 2025 plan. Enough ranting for today.
Thanks for posting. Cholesterol, saturated fats and everything in nutrition is an entire rabbit hole in and of itself. Stress and inflammation are indeed major factors affecting LDL cholesterol and one of the best ways to reduce those is exercise.
RFK is a nutcase and I hate that he's partially right and will make so many people do a 180 on reducing rape seed, canola and sunflower oils in favor of beef tallow, gee or butter.
I'm going to give him this one. Since it's nutrition I'm going to give my oversimplified layman explanation of it.
Dietary guidelines started during the margarine era of food when it was heavily marketed as a healthier alternative. People flocked to polyunsaturated fats like canola, rapeseed and sunflower oils which in modern day has been associated with a lot of health issues including weight gain.
There also is a correlation between saturated fats and cholesterol but that too is more nuanced now when looking at high density cholesterol (HDL) and low density (LDL). The body can get rid of LDL easily bit HDL clogs up the bloodstream. People eating more unsaturated fat tend to have unhealthier lifestyles and more importantly when you control for those factors such as drinking, smoking and not exercising and look at LDL numbers the correlation disappears.
I'm not advocating for processed meats like sausages, salami and pepperoni which is another can of worms. You should also definitely have some olive oil (mono unsaturated fat) that gets is that sweet sweet conjugated linolic acid.
So in short, avoid rape seed oil, sunflower and canola, especially if old or cooked at high temps.
Olive oil is amazing, as well as coconut oil.
Cow butter (watch the salt though), gee and beef tallow are in general a healthier options and way more nutritious. They're also more stable at higher temperatures like when frying on a pan and avoid a lot of health issues that come with polyunsaturated fats.
I'm going to reluctantly give this stupid lunatic this one.
I'd be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt more often, even for outrageous sounding stuff, but he has a poor track record of backing any of his claims up with evidence.
Yeah, I think this one comes from the carnivore diet which is pretty dubious IMO. Inuit cultures have made it sort of work to be fair but the fruits and vegetables are just stupid good at fulfilling their part of nutrition needs.
The only people who are going to listen to this guy are the people that either voted for him in the primary or Trump, so FUCK YEA EAT ALL THE SATURATED FATS, MAGA!! OWN THE LIBS!!
Also, I don’t have the patience for any insufferable twats who are itching to reply “akshully it’s the innocent kids who are gonna suffer” to this sarcastic, emotionally-driven screed. No, I’m not going to feel one iota of badness for saying what I just said no matter what you reply with.
That way there's more olive oil for the wealthy. 🤷
I'm grateful I don't live in that country because it allows me to take a step back and enjoy the hilarious absurdity of this whole "brain worm JFK in charge of health" situation.
sorry, didn't notice the community, pithy response not warranted from me even if it's how i feel :)
Americans should emulate RFK Jr for health and shoot heroin
On the one hand, more fat means less sugar that’s going to piss off a very powerful lobby in the US.
So yea, go for it, fuckhead.
Alarming health experts who don't keep up with the literature. https://hackertalks.com/post/17259951
One journal entry, on JACC that I could find. There are many journal entries still showing risk. I think there is more studies needed before saturated fats are considered "ok". Also with the current administration i wouldn't trust what is published in the us
The key term is "alarming" , so if a expert in the field who keeps up with the literature would not be alarmed when faced with something they have come across already in the literature.
If you read the position statement they do a great summary of why the case against saturated fat has been a big nothing burger and it was replaced by things harmful to health.
They would be justifiably alarmed if there needs to be more research done on a topic, and brain worm Mcgee started preaching things as gospel
Have you read the journal article? would you like to discuss it?
Or is the issue that it's only one reference I supplied?
Or if you prefer a more approachable summary: https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/saturated-fat#evidence-to-date
What should alarm everyone is that saturated fat was vilified and replacement with a manufactured fat source and carbohydrates (a new human eating pattern) without sufficient evidence. Going back the the 1900s diet, a eating pattern established before our modern plagues of diabetes, obesity, cancer shouldn't really be considered crazy.
I searched the jacc website for a key word of saturated fats, the study you mentioned was the only one I saw on the site, I'm not discounting it
Data to back up the impact of eating unhealthy food doesn't even matter.