Open letter to Health Canada on Dietary Guidelines

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Signed by ~700 doctors.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8jdVs ... sp=sharing

The Canadian Dietary Guidelines should:
1. Clearly communicate to the public and health-care professionals that the low-fat diet is
no longer supported, and can worsen heart-disease risk factors (5,6,7,8,22,24,27,31,34,
35).
2. Be created without influence from the food industry (4).
3. Eliminate caps on saturated fats (8,20,22,34, 35).
4. Be nutritionally sufficient, and those nutrients should come from real foods, not from
artificially fortified refined grains (9, 34, 35).
5. Promote low-carb diets as at least one safe and effective intervention for people
struggling with obesity, diabetes, and heart disease (10,11,13,21,27,34).
6. Offer a true range of diets that respond to the diverse nutritional needs of our population
(12).
7. Recognize the controversy on salt and cease the blanket "lower is better”
recommendation (15,16,26,33,34,36).
8. Stop using any language suggesting that sustainable weight control can simply be
managed by creating a caloric deficit (14,21,27,28,29,30,32).
9. Cease its advice to replace saturated fats with polyunsaturated, refined vegetable oils to
prevent cardiovascular disease (17,18,19,20).
10. Stop steering people away from nutritious whole foods, such as whole-fat dairy and
regular red meat (18,34).
11. Include a cap on added sugar, in accordance with the updated WHO guidelines, ideally
no greater than 5% of total calories (25).
12. Be based on a complete, comprehensive review of the most rigorous data available. In
the absence of randomized clinical controlled trial data, rely on large epidemiologic
studies with major clinical outcomes (avoid relying on surrogate endpoint studies), but
accept that the level of evidence is less robust. If such data is not available, the
Guidelines should remain silent.

That's great. Who wrote it?

This is all good for eaters, but meat and dairy have a much lower profit margin than most high carb foods, especially the colorful and well-marketed stuff. Is nobody here thinking of the food industry's needs? And what about the industry for insulin and diabetes medication? Wide adoption of these guidelines would cost them hundreds of billions in annual revenue. Even big charities would all have to downsize now that they're not talking about public health threat #1.

I wish this letter and its cause the best of luck. There are a lot of voices out there speaking the truth that are being suppressed and overruled by those who profit from the status quo.

Forgot ban trans fats. Last time I checked Health Canada still hasnt got around to banning them despite the US having done so years ago.