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- Page navigation anchor for RE: Resisting influence from agri-food industries on Canada's new food guideRE: Resisting influence from agri-food industries on Canada's new food guide
We thank Drs. Bradshaw and Loffelmann for their contribution to the discussion of plant versus animal product based nutrition.
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They have suggested that the National Academes of Sciences (NAS) has criticized the DGAC/DGA for a lack of sound science in recommending a low saturated fat and more plant based diet for Americans [1].
We note that NAS stress that the findings of their report “should NOT be considered as judgments about the quality of prior DGA or DGAC reports” [1]. It is also worth noting that the submissions to the DGA were both for and against a shift to a more plant based diet but that on the issue of sustainability most submissions supported its inclusion in Guidelines [1].
These NAS comments do not sound like criticism of the US guidelines as inferred.
The authors quote Dr. Yusuf’s PURE study as supporting low carbohydrate high meat diets [2]. Certainly the socioeconomic status (SES) of those on high carbohydrate diets was low, and we know that SES is a powerful diver of health outcomes that may be difficult to control for [2]. However perhaps more telling is their back to back second paper in the Lancet showing that consumption of legumes, fruit and vegetables (good sources of carbohydrate)are associated with overall longevity (reduced all-cause mortality)[3]. Perhaps these findings may be interpreted as indicating that fat may be better than bad carbohydrate but that low glycemic index carbohydrates (eaten in increased amounts by veg...Competing Interests: David Jenkins is a vegan and has been funded by Industry. - Page navigation anchor for RE: More prominence to conflicting interests.RE: More prominence to conflicting interests.
Perhaps the CMAJ could lead the way in implementing a new format which would allow the busy clinician to filter out the biased chaff from papers of true clinical importance. That format is this:
Give prominence of place, immediately following the authors identification and article citation information, to the conflicting interests information on each author, rather than relegating it to the end of the paper.
Faced with line after line of company and corporate interest agency names, most intelligent clinicians would skip to the next article, the one funded by a reputable, unbiased agency. Only equally conflicted academics would be likely to bother reading the writings of those who have "rented" themselves to so many, perhaps as much to keep score as for any academic merit their missive might contain.
If this were implemented, I expect that articles such as this one, by Grant & Jenkins, and those by a Dr. J. Sievenpiper, and similarly widely industry funded authors, would be rarely read. Perhaps CMAJ would even cease to accept such works.
Furthermore, in regards to conflict of interest in articles touching on diet and nutrition, perhaps it should be mandatory that authors declare that they are vegan, some variety of vegetarian, coffee or tea free, alcoholic or abstainer, low carb or keto, paleo, onmivore, carnivore, bacon only or never, or what have you, for such personal decisions certainly guide one's stated opinions, just a...
Show MoreCompeting Interests: None declared. - Page navigation anchor for RE: Resisting influence from agri-food industries on Canada's new food guideRE: Resisting influence from agri-food industries on Canada's new food guide
We have read this article with interest. We represent a growing number of Canadian physicians and health professionals called the Canadian Clinicians for Therapeutic Nutrition, who use whole food nutritional strategies to prevent and often reverse the burden of chronic non-communicable disease in our patients. We have been fiercely advocating for evidence-based dietary guidelines to replace the failed low-fat, high-carbohydrate guidelines that were introduced decades ago; guidelines introduced without good evidence, and which have likely shaped the sugar-laden, processed food environment we find ourselves in. We wholeheartedly agree with ensuring the food industry is not involved in creating new guidelines, or in any front of package labelling decisions.
However, we cannot agree that the new Food Guide represents a sufficiently evidence-based approach, based largely as it is on references to existing guidelines which have recently come under high-profile criticism for their lack of a sound scientific base by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (1). We must strongly question making saturated fat a center-piece of dietary advice, and advocating for low fat rather than high fat dairy, both of which run strongly contrary to the balance of available evidence, which has shifted substantially over the last decade.
An analysis of randomized controlled trials (2) shows there was no evidence to issue the low fat dietary guidelines in 1977 and...
Show MoreCompeting Interests: None declared.