Adele Hite Profile picture
5 Dec, 5 tweets, 1 min read
LOL. Right.

And how do you think the food environment gets shaped?

You don't have to "know" about the guidelines in order to be affected by them *across the socio-ecological model.*

They impact everything, including how we think about & define what is "healthy food."
Okay. Let's look at the food environment.

When the DGA created demand - which it did - for foods that had less fat, sodium, and cholesterol, what foods available for purchase changed.

in 1980, it was hard to find "low fat" yogurt. After a while, that's ALL you could find.
But when something gets removed from food, that doesn't mean it gets removed from the food SUPPLY.

The fat that used to be in dairy products could now be used to make cheeze cheep, leading to cheep supercheezy pizza.
The boom in demand for boneless skinless chicken breasts - instigated by the dietary guidelines - is DIRECTLY related to the availability of chicken wings for Buffalo chicken wing joints that opened up across the US.
So start by getting real about how a "food environment" comes about before you lecture me about how dietary guidelines can't affect eating habits because "no one even knows what they are." 🙄

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More from @ahhite

5 Dec
Twitter summary - The DGA:
1) Are ineffective. They were developed to prevent an "epidemic" of obesity & chronic disease & they did not.

2) Lack evidence. Don't take my word for it; Walter Willett says so too: Image
3) Are unethical: Image
Read 9 tweets
9 Nov
What? I'm not sure where you are getting your information from or what Americans you hang out with when you visit, but I don't know anyone who fits this description. Thread.
I've been trying to avoid going here, but here I go.

The desire to tell other people how to eat, because you are convinced - for some reason - that people do not "care" about their health & therefore "WE" (whoever "we" is) must tell them how to eat 1/n
is EXACTLY how we got into this mess in the 1st place.

It's not my job, your job, or anyone's job to "fix" the lives of people who live in a way that we disapprove of or dislike when they have not asked us for help.

That's how we got dietary guidelines in the first place. 2/n
Read 16 tweets
8 Sep
It's presumptuous (& wrong) to say evidence is "clear" in fields as young as these. This is exactly why we *should* be speaking on this topic: to counter people like you making vastly premature pronouncements about what is clearly *not* "clear." Thread. 1/n @NanciGuestRDPhD Vegan dietitian declaring herself & her ideological companio
Nutrition as it relates to chronic disease and agricultural management of the food supply as it relates to climate change are (relatively) young scientific fields.

ALL science is tentative & likely to be refuted. This is especially true in young fields of science. 2/n
As for "consensus," at one time, there was "consensus" among 1000s of scientists that: spontaneous generation was a thing; men were smarter than women; white people were smarter than dark skinned people; eugenics (look it up) would make the world a better place; etc. etc. 3/n
Read 10 tweets
14 Aug
To me, this comment & some that follow indicate that there are some misconceptions about how we got where we are now (& thus, I think, some mistaken ideas about how to change the situation). Thread.
1st, lower fat, higher carb national dietary guidelines *began* as a clinical intervention for high risk patients. Then (as now) docs who were trying to the right thing for patients in their care, read research & advised their (high risk) patients accordingly. 2/
Food manufacturers picked up on this. They thought, "Hey, fear & uncertainty MOVES PRODUCT. Let's use this to advertise products that say to housewives 'Hey, your son or husband *might* be high-risk. Protect them by buying our product." 3/
Read 14 tweets
22 May
The Surgeon General's Report on Smoking - which dramatically changed the smoking habits of Americans - would not have happened without epidemiology.

Biochemistry is very important. But ... 1/n
Mechanisms acting at cellular levels do not necessarily give full explanations of physiological level effects & outcomes. Metabolism is too complicated for that.

Effects of smoking are seen at cellular, physiological & population levels. You can't say the same for pizza. 2/
There are other problems with comparing smoking to food/eating:

1) RRs for smoking were 10-fold greater than what is typically seen in *any* nutritional epidemiology study.
2) Individuals are quite accurate in their recall of their smoking history. 3/
Read 12 tweets
3 Apr
I would say "anger" motivates me as well. But not MY anger.

I have in my heart & in my head the voices of the dozens of (mostly) women patients who tried hard, for years, to bring their heath in line by following the guidance they were given.
They were told to
--eat less and move more, as if these two things are independent of each other
--count calories in/out, as if health is a math problem
--drink more water, as if that can nourish an underfed body
--write down everything, as if this would "Make It So."
When these things didn't work, they were scolded. They were told they must not be "trying" or "paying attention." They were told they needed to "keep better track" and "not fool themselves."

And they did. They tried harder. They wrote everything down. It still didn't work.
Read 13 tweets

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