Kiitos vikkari! Eilinen oli suuri päivä tieteelle. Niin ja karppaukselle!

The DGAC ignored a large body of scientific literature on low-carbohydrate diets(including several “long term” trials of 2-years duration) demonstrating that these diets are safe and highly effective for combatting obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

Kiitos vikkari! Eilinen oli suuri päivä tieteelle. Niin ja karppaukselle!

US investigative journalist Nina Teicholz calls it “a victory for science”. South African scientist Tim Noakes says it proves that one person can “change the world”. I say it’s a decisive defeat for medical, scientific and dietetic establishments in their ongoing war against the critics.
The BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) has announced that it will not retract the peer-reviewed investigation it published by Teicholz in September 2015. The feature documents in detail how the US Dietary Guidelines (DGAs) have ignored vast amounts of rigorous scientific evidence. This evidence is on key issues such as saturated fats and low-carbohydrate diets.

Other revelations of Teicholz’s article include that the DGAC:
-Did not follow the standard US Department of Agriculture (USDA) review process on a majority of topics;
-Based a number of recommendations, including the new vegetarian “Dietary Pattern”, on inconclusive evidence.
-Stated that the evidence of a link between saturated fats and heart disease was “strong” but the evidence cited did not clearly support this;
-Recommended reducing red and processed meats yet did not conduct an analysis of the scientific literature on this subject;
-Recommended reducing salt as much as possible, yet the most recent, authoritative review on this subject, by the Institute of Medicine study, which the DGAC itself cited, does not support this.

Many of the author’s arguments in the BMJ article and in her rebuttal to the CSPI letter reflect a lack of knowledge of current practice in guideline development and systematic review methods, and it does not appear that she consulted any experts or published works on these topics.

The decision to publish the article as a BMJ Investigation is regrettable. The article is better described as an opinion piece, editorial, or even an example of lobbying literature than an independent investigation.

Despite these very concerning issues, I do not recommend that the article should be retracted on the grounds that it is “riddled with errors.” While there are errors, the main problem is that the article contains interpretations, opinions, and poorly informed judgments about what is and isn’t “standard” or “established methods” when it comes to systematic review and guideline development.

... In the end, the errors in my BMJ article were trivial and did not alter any assertions in the piece.

What was so dangerous in my article that it needed to be deleted from the scientific record? Its main findings--which have now been thrice peer-reviewed and confirmed as correct--are that:

-the expert report on which the Dietary Guidelines are based is comprised of non-rigorous reviews of the science;

-the majority of rigorous clinical trial science has been ignored (and has been for decades);
reviews on key issues—including saturated fat and the low-carbohydrate diet—were not properly conducted;

-the government-recommended diets are based on only a “minuscule amount of rigorous data that these diets can prevent diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.”

-in particular, the newly introduced "vegetarian diet,"  is based on evidence that the expert report itself judges to be "inconclusive," which is the lowest grade assigned to available evidence.

-Other findings from the article are listed in my comment published in The BMJ. Thus, despite enormous scrutiny, the article stands, and it provides vital information for how we might better fight the diseases that cripple our nation.