Problem with USDA protein recommendations

 

Principles of USDA dietary guidelines 

The 2020-2025 USDA dietary guidelines emphasize the following principles (among other things): 

1. Dietary cholesterol consumption should be as low as possible. 
2. Saturated fat should be limited to less than 10 percent of calories. 
3. At least 30 grams (varies by age) of fiber per day. (points out that more than 90% of women and 97% of men do not meet this minimum recommendation).  
   

The "other things" mentioned above is that dietary patterns must include lots of fruits, vegetables and whole grains.  I have seen the same recommendations from many doctors and organizations I respect.

 

Recommendations for protein sources

When it comes to recommending specific protein food, it recommends the following: 

Lean meats, poultry, and eggs; seafood; beans, peas, and lentils, and nuts, seeds, and soy products. 

Well, lets see how these foods stand up to their own principles. Below is a table showing some nutritional information for some of the above mentioned protein sources. I normalized according to protein content as they are cited as protein food. 

The first 4 are animal based sources, and the last 3 are plant based sources. We can make the following observations. 

Cholesterol

The animal based food are high in cholesterol, whereas plant based sources have zero cholesterol.  Notice the ridiculously high cholesterol content in eggs!!  To get a perspective of how big these numbers are, the RDA for dietary cholesterol used to be 300 mg per day for healthy people, and 200 mg a day for people with risk factors. However, as the dangers of dietary cholesterol are becoming clearer, the guidelines have now changed to "as little as possible" putting dietary cholesterol in the same category as trans fats. If they are follow their own principle on dietary cholesterol, then their specific food recommendations should be restricted to plant based sources. 

Saturated fat

Animal based foods are much higher in saturated fats relative to plants. The only animal based source which is somewhat comparable is chicken breast, but all the rest are at least 10 times higher in saturated fat. The dietary guidelines committee recognizes that only 23% of individuals consume saturated fat within limits due to poor eating habits which include food sources with added saturated fats. While they do recommend strategies to reduce saturated fat intake, it seems they are losing a valuable opportunity while recommending protein sources. 

Fiber

As the guidelines emphasize, there is a national crisis when it comes to fiber. Almost all Americans are deficient in fiber. As the table above shows, animal based sources have zero fiber, whereas plant based sources which are rich in protein (the legume family) also tend to be very high in fiber. In fact, they are probably the richest sources of fiber amongst all food. Once again, if the USDA dietary guidelines committee is really concerned about fiber deficiency, they should restrict their protein recommendations to plant based sources. 

The above three points are summarized in the table below

The conflict of interest

In keeping with the principles of dietary patterns laid out, it seems that the USDA guidelines should stick to plant based protein sources. Then why are they not? My guess is because they have to protect the interests of the meat and egg industries as it is a part of their mandate. As is clear in this discussion, this conflict of interest is creating contradictions in their recommendations. 

What I learnt from discussing about veganism with a muslim

 After a long and rather frustrating conversation, here is what I learnt about his worldview: "If something is explicitly permitted in the Quran, it is by definition not immoral". The problem is, there are immoral things stated in the Quran, and people like him will likely keep their head in the sand about it. 

In the discussion, the following argument was repeated multiple time: 

Me: Do you agree that killing animals and eating them is not necessary for living a healthy life? 

Him: Yes. 

Me: Do you agree that it is immoral to kill animals unnecessarily? 

Him: Yes. 

Me: Then, doesn't it follow that killing animals for eating is immoral? 

Him: No. 

At this point I am perplexed. This is as straight forward a logic as it gets. 

Me: How does that not follow logic? 

Him: Because it is permitted in Quran. Quran explicitly states that we can eat 4 species of animals. 

After 4 or 5 rounds of me walking him through this logic and asking him how he is not contradicting himself, he finally made me change the statement

"It is immoral to kill animals unnecessarily" 

to 

"It is immoral to kill animals unnecessarily unless they belong to those 4 specific species"

After that the argument turned to why it is immoral to kill some species and not these 4. His answer was because the Quran says so. According to him, his entire morality is just based on what the Quran says, not based on any principles or knowledge or thought. 

During the discussion, he also tried to justify eating animals the following ways: 

- If you look at the record, there is not shortage of animals we eat, whereas the rest of the animals are dyeing out. Why do you think that is? Because god has his blessing on these animals and he is providing them for us. 

       - When I pointed out that the only reason they are not in shortage is that we are breeding them, he changed the subject.

Him: There may be [additional] health benefits to eating animals. 

I showed him the Academy of nutrition and dietetics statement about nutritional adequacy of begin a vegan, and asked him

Me:  Do you agree that killing animals and eating them is not necessary for living a healthy life?

Him: Yes

Me: Then how is it not a contradiction with your previous statement "There may be health benefits to eating animals. " 

Him: Because it is permitted in Quran. 

I hope the reader can understand why a discussion filled with arguments like these can be frustrating. What really pains me is that this person is my colleague, an Engineering professor in a University who is supposed to be teaching students how to think systematically. Unfortunately, this is not the only Engineering professor I have had such conversations with. Our discussions about teaching methods and how to improve teaching outcomes also follow similarly frustrating discussions. 

This is one of the many occasions which make me reflect on where I am working, who my colleagues are how important it is to take an active role in designing my career and being in a place where I can respect my colleagues. 

Why Physics teachers must read and teach history

 Teaching physics to students it to take a mind which doesn't know a much about laws of nature other than what they have accumulated through their everyday experience. Fundamentally, this transformation of “state of mind” is similar to the transformation of “state of knowledge” of human civilization about natural laws. However, the process of teaching physics to students stands very different from the story of how we as human discovered these laws.

Take atomic theory for example. It took over 200 years of investigation and developments in fields of chemistry, electricity, optics and study of gases to finally gather evidence for the completely non-obvious fact that matter is made of atoms, and different elements have different atomic structures. The world view changed slowly over time through critical inquiry of many (sometimes accidental) observations. Yet, our students are just provided the end result as if that is how knowledge is obtained: by someone or some textbook telling you.

By telling them ““what we know” without the details about “how we know”, we are giving our students a wrong impression about how knowledge is obtained. Perhaps, this is one of the contributing factor in explaining why it is so easy to spread misinformation.  

Students and motivation

The argument which often surfaces during my discussions with colleagues about teaching practices is as follows: 

If students are motivated they will do well, and if they are not, they won't. Everything else doesn't matter. 

Some thoughts on this:

1. Most students are not self-motivated. There are many reasons for this including, 
• In college because that is what they thought they were supposed to do and didn't know what else to do. 
• Just want a degree so that they can get a job. 
• Course is not important to them and they are taking it just because it is required. 
• Distracted because of personal problems. 
• Working too much because of financial problems. 
• ... This list can get pretty long, so I will stop here. 
2. Incentives matter. Motivation doesn't automatically imply discipline and time management skills. The degree of focus and effort dedicated to coursework depends a lot on the incentive structure. One needs only to ask this hypothetical question: "What if homework assignments are not required?". Would we really think that would not impact their learning? 
3. Motivation does not automatically imply critical thinking skills and deep learning approaches. Most well motivated students who are working hard are quite content with memorization and procedure-replication if that is what they are used to and if those practices get them a good grade. 

Conversation with a student

 This email exchange was after a verbal discussion. The context was that the student made fundamental mistakes in a quiz, realized that is what happened but was upset about losing points. 

Student: 

I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to talk to me after class today. I have a problem with relating my self worth to my grades, so I tend to get overly emotional and anxious when I feel like I am doing poorly. Usually I understand topics like this fairly easily, so feeling lost sometimes has been making me anxious and stressed. I appreciate your reassurance that my grade will be fine in the end as long as I keep applying myself. I also really appreciate you still talking to me and not writing me off when I was getting emotional. Thank you very much for your patience and understanding. I will continue to do my best in class.

My response: 

I am glad you came to me and expressed your thoughts. You care about your learning, so I think it is healthy to get emotional. I don't show it much, but I get very emotional (sometimes angry and frustrated) about teaching too.  In the end we must remember that is because we care, which is a good thing. 

I understand what you are saying about feeling anxious when you are lost. Here are my thoughts: from my observations, you are not usually lost. In fact, you are following the material better than most students in the class. What does happen sometimes is that you make mistakes or make incorrect assumptions or fail to recognize that you are looking at a slightly different context than what you saw before. This is perfectly normal when you are learning new material. 

The fact that you are not used to this implies to me that your previous courses did not set the expectations high enough, and that is obviously not your fault. The exam questions usually don't test your ability to apply your knowledge in a new context, and as such, I think most of my students have a low expectation of what it means to earn an A in a course. My opinion about an A grade is that "you mastered the material", which implies your ability to solve new problems or problems in a new context using your existing knowledge. 

In my experience, students who listen to my advice (like you are doing) and work through this initial "making mistakes" phase, eventually earn an A in my courses.

Systemic approach to improve quality of food consumption

 A collaboration between physicians, grocery stores, insurance companies and data analytics companies to combat diseases caused by food, diseases which can be controlled or reversed by dietary interventions. 

For knowledgeable and well-meaning physicians, the motivation and benefits are obvious. 

Grocery stores can have a "weekly grocery" program where the items are curated by physicians with some limited flexibility. This may also increase their predictability on demand, and it is likely they will have steady customers even after the program ends. 

Insurance companies can either subsidize the cost or even pay for it for a certain duration. What is a better motivator than "free food"? Considering that they don't have to pay for expensive medication when the medical conditions reverse, they may end up saving a lot of money. 

Data analytics companies can play a role in tracking nutrients, using nudge tactics, and prediction to provide estimates of "correct" times for interventions or doing more tests. (they could possibly do a lot more). 

Will this work? 

Are we really more moral than slave owners?

 I recall saying to this to my friends a few times, "What would be a current day analogy to the practice of human slavery in the past? It would be how we treat animals." 

Certainly, people back then did not think it was moral to do so, but used various excuses to rationalize it and/or suppress those thoughts and go on about their lives. Otherwise decent people who enslaved other people would probably have said "everyone else is doing it", and people who benefited from low cost of goods at the expense of those enslaved would probably have said, "I have to live, and I am not the one enslaving". 

I am guilty of such rationalizing all these years knowing full well how animals I am eating were treated all their life before they were slaughtered, often in-humanely. They are tortured horribly all their life before being converted into nuggets and packages which we buy at the counter, or order from our tables. Pigs and Cows are so emotionally mature that they are social, show love to their off-springs, and even to humans if the effort is made. Yet, I am guilty of suppressing those thoughts. When I am trying to understand people living in bubbles, this rather shameful chapter of my life should serve as a helping tool. 

I am writing this now while attempting to transition to plant based food only, but my guilt is not the main reason I am attempting this transition. Rather, it is for my health. I hope I learn my lesson from this and try to do the right things in the Future (for the right reasons).