The Serious Problem With Recommended Nutritional Daily Values In America

Fact: the majority of deaths in the United States are preventable and related to what we are eating (1).

In accordance with the largest analysis of disease and disability risk factors to date (and certainly the longest citation I’ve ever laid eyes upon), the Standard American Diet — quite fittingly referred to as S.A.D — is both the number-one cause of death as well as general disability in America (2).

Clearly, we are missing something major for our eating habits to be so directly responsible for our top 10(!) causes of death, save for tobacco smoking which is currently ranked number two.

So, is it a question of what we’re eating, what we’re not eating, or both? How far from the mark of good health are we really, as a country? And what the hell is going on with our nutritional daily recommendations?

Let’s get started.

As It Currently Stands

You’re probably familiar with the idea of getting your 5 portions of fruits and vegetables a day. That’s great!

However, first introduced by fruit and vegetable companies as a marketing campaign following a meeting with the U.S. National Cancer Institute in 1991, the 5-a-day slogan was designed to represent a bare minimum, not an optimal guideline (3).

In fact, a study recently published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health went as far to state that the perceived recommendation of 5-a-day, “might provide a false reassurance and risk complacency among individuals who already eat that amount,” and that they undeniably, “need to aim higher (4).”

What’s even more disconcerting, is that 3 out of 4 Americans are currently not managing to eat a single serving of fruit per day, with 9 out of 10 failing to meet the minimum requirement for green vegetables each day (5).

Research indicates that for anyone over the age of 3 years old, getting 5-a-day is just simply not enough. A number closer to 8–10 is really where our daily minimum should lie, with evidence to suggest that individuals consuming an average of 7 or more servings of fresh fruit and vegetables per day experience a 42% reduced risk of death compared to those who consume just one (6).

Not only are the current minimum recommended daily values significantly inadequate when all evidence is taken into account, but to top it off, Americans are falling dangerously short of meeting these crappy guidelines to begin with.

And we’re only at the beginning.

Sugar and Junk Food Calorie Allowance

Did you know that, in 2005, federally regulated nutritional guidelines allowed for a quarter of our daily calories to be empty, i.e. coming from sources that offer no nutritional value (7)?

To re-phrase; the federal organizations responsible for the health of the American people, posited that it was completely fine for a whopping 25% of your diet to be comprised of cotton-candy, or soda, or Big Macs.

And you want to know what the really scary part is? 95% of Americans exceed that number routinely, with empty calories from added sugars and saturated fats comprising 40% of the total daily calories consumed by 2–18-year-olds nationwide (8). A measly 1 out of every 1000 children averages below the 25% — the equivalent of around 24 spoonfuls of sugar, that is (9)!

Ignoring the fact that our bodies have absolutely no nutritional requirement for sugar, the current 2015 to 2020 Dietary Guidelines have since been updated to allow for a reduced, but still significantly concerning, 10% daily calories from junk food. With an average teenager consuming over 87 grams of sugar per day, (the equivalent of 29 packets of sugar), it’s no surprise that every single age bracket within the United States— beginning with babies aged 1 — exceeds this “guideline (10).”

Worth noting is that the Sugar Association — accounting for 90% of sugar production in the USA — describes the 10% recommendation as being, “extremely low,” conveniently stating that they, “support and promote sugar in moderation as a safe and useful part of a balanced diet (11).”

In 2003, when research published by the World Health Organization called for a reduction in the federal recommendation to under 10%, the Sugar Association responded by threatening to pressure Congress to withdraw all U.S. support and funding from the WHO (12).

Thus, the 10% recommendation remains — right alongside the question of who is actually running our system of healthcare.

Sodium and The Myth of “Normal”

US adults consume, on average, 3400mg of sodium per day, far above the federal guidelines that suggest a maximum of 2300mg, or 1500mg for African-Americans, those over the age of 51, and individuals suffering from hypertension, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease (13).

What’s more is that research suggests that if American’s were to cut their sodium intake by only half a teaspoon each day, up to 22% of fatal strokes, and 16% of deaths by heart-attack could be prevented (14).

This is because high blood pressure — something established as directly relating to sodium intake — is the single greatest risk factor for death, affecting nearly 78 million, or 1 in every 3, Americans each year (15.)

A “normal” blood pressure level, as dictated by American federal guidelines, is 140/90. The problem with the 140/90 cut off, however, is that it’s based on acceptable averages and not actual scientific reasoning.

Research shows that even people with blood pressure under 120/80 can benefit greatly from a further reduction, with evidence to suggest that optimal blood pressure would, in reality, need to be below 115/75 — where the risk of cardiovascular first begins (16).

So, if our number 1 killer risk factor begins with a blood pressure level of only 115/75, then why are we using an arbitrary number, one that places over 80% of adults in the world at risk, as a suggestion for a healthy lifestyle?

If by having a “normal” blood pressure (potentially caused by a “normal” salt intake), these nutritional guidelines really just mean dying of a “normal” cause like a heart attack or stroke, then we seriously need to be rethinking our relationship with them.

Cholesterol

Barring cases of rare genetic disorders, our bodies naturally produce all the cholesterol we need, which makes it particularly astonishing that, in 2015, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) decided to do away entirely with the limits they placed on the consumption of dietary cholesterol, citing “insufficient evidence,” to suggests that cholesterol was of concern for overconsumption (17).

Shockingly, this decision was made despite the plethora of research studies available that significantly and unequivocally implicate dietary cholesterol as being responsible for a build-up of plaque-causing, and heart attack inducing low-density lipoproteins (LDL) within the arteries (18).

What, then, can explain the reason that the DGAC seemed to completely miss all this prior evidence? Not unlike the conundrum with the Sugar Association — it has to do with money.

In 1977, the National Commission on Egg Nutrition was taken to the U.S Supreme Court on the accusation of false advertising. From that day forward, the egg industry was no longer allowed to make the claim “that there was no scientific evidence that eating eggs increases the risk of heart and circulatory disease,” nor, “that eating eggs does not increase the blood cholesterol level in a normal person,” most simply because the vast majority of research says it does (19).

As a result of being legally prevented from promoting eggs as a heart-healthy food, the Commission found sneakier ways to get their pro-egg, pro-cholesterol message across by funding research studies to draw conclusions in their favour.

A meta-analysis of over 211 studies revealed that the number of cholesterol-related studies funded by the egg industry increased substantially from 0% in the 1950s to 60% between 2010–2019. It comes as less of a surprise that among the funded studies they examined, the majority also found in favour of “healthy” cholesterol in the form of — you guessed it: eggs (20).

Interestingly enough, dietary cholesterol can only exclusively be found in animal products, meaning that the decision to remove all concerns of cholesterol from the federal nutritional guidelines is somewhat at odds with the recommendation by the WHO for a healthy diet to be centered around whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetables.

Fibre

Speaking of plants, they’re the one and only place you can find fibre.

Meat, fish, cheese, eggs, and dairy all have zero fibre to be found, and it’s the overwhelming prevalence of these foods in the S.A.D. that might help to explain why an incredible 97% of all Americans fail to meet the daily recommended value of 31.5g fibre per day — on average getting only 15g (21).

Although not classified as an essential nutrient, fibre has been long associated with a strengthening of the immune system, a lowering of cholesterol, risk of metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, obesity, various cancers, and the prevention of diabetes and colon cancer (22).

Additionally, there’s substantial evidence to indicate that during Paleolithic times, humans were consuming up to 105 grams of the stuff per day (23). Yet, if we break down the statistics by age and gender, the percent of men aged between 14 and 50 that meet the U.S. recommended minimum value is zero. This sounds crazy! How is it possible we could be eating so drastically different from our ancestors?

Well, when you consider that 96% of Americans don’t meet the (already low) requirement for beans, 96% miss the mark for greens, and 99% are failing to eat enough whole grains every day — it starts to make more sense.

Potassium

If you didn’t think we could be doing any worse a job of meeting the nutritional guidelines as we do with fibre, then think again; less than 2% of people in the United States achieve an “adequate” daily intake of potassium (24).

Not unlike fibre, for much of the last 3 million years, humans beings were so dependent on plants to comprise the majority of their diet, that regularly obtaining upwards of 10,000 mg of potassium per day was no big deal.

Nowadays, U.S. guidelines dictate that 4700mg is optimal, leading individuals to believe that anything exceeding this dose might put them at risk of “being high.” In reality, there is a failure to address the true problem, with the norms of these supposedly scientific nutritional guidelines being grounded in the dietary norms of a very sick and suffering society.

“In conclusion, nearly the entire U.S. population consumes a diet that is not on par with recommendations. These findings add another piece to the rather disturbing picture that is emerging of a nation’s diet in crisis.” — Krebs-Smith, et al. (2010).

Final Thoughts

Generally speaking, the dietary guidelines that our government chooses to highlight and publicize are largely rooted in either the specific articles of research they choose to pay attention to (through funding and bias sampling), or the socially-accepted standard for the American public.

Unfortunately, the monetary ties between industries such as The Sugar Commission, or the Animal Agriculture sectors and our western bodies of government are within the multi-billions — and there is no foreseeable separation of these entities taking place any time soon, either.

Then, considering the very small amount of research that does get factored into the dietary, medical, and governing institute guidelines, the values being emphasized often fall drastically short of remedying the epidemic of diet-related diseases and health issues across the nation.

It would be dangerous to mistake the nutritional guidelines in American as having anything particular to do with guiding American nutrition.

Alexandra Walker-Jones — January 2021

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