2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans Fail to Consider 60% of Americans

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 17, 2020
Press Contact: Jessica Wharton
jessica@lowcarbaction.org

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Low-Carb Action Network (L-CAN) today expressed extreme disappointment and concern over the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), which were created for healthy Americans only, therefore excluding the 60% of Americans with one or more chronic, nutrition-related illness.

“Unfortunately, the release of these Guidelines is a huge missed opportunity for our nation’s leading nutrition policy to embrace science and provide adequate nutrition advice for every American,” stated Dr. Mark Cucuzzella, L-CAN Director, medical doctor, and professor of family medicine at West Virginia University. “Low-carb diets are proven to be effective at treating diabetes, obesity, and other metabolic diseases. It is unfathomable why the Guidelines wouldn’t embrace and share this potentially life-changing information with the American people.”

L-CAN submitted 65 low-carb studies to the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) that have, as their primary goal, the mitigation of metabolic conditions that lead to diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and heart disease. The DGAC ignored those studies and made the decision to exclude all studies that aimed to reduce obesity. L-CAN identified an additional 70 low-carb studies that the DGAC did not consider in its review of scientific literature in which weight loss is not the primary goal.

“As a medical professional, it’s disturbing to see the lack of scientific rigor, and seemingly lack of care, that went into creating these Guidelines,” said Dr. Charles Cavo, L-CAN Steering Committee member, medical doctor, and Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder of Pounds Transformation in West Hartford, CT. “Our nation’s health has been on a steady decline since the introduction of the Guidelines in 1980, and this iteration is simply “more of the same”. How can we help Americans achieve healthy weights when we continue to recommend over half of daily calories from carbohydrates? The science clearly states that we can’t.”

The theme of the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans is “make every bite count”, and the Guidelines do note the largely declining health of Americans. Alas, the DGA present options that are simply inappropriate for those Americans with one of more diet-related illness, which is why L-CAN strongly pushed for a warning label on these Guidelines noting that they’re created for only healthy Americans.

By ignoring the needs of the majority of Americans, L-CAN believes the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines are destined to do a great disservice to the American public. All people deserve the opportunity to preserve or reclaim their health through proper nutrition and dietary advice.

##

The Low-Carb Action Network is a coalition of doctors, academics, advocates, and Americans with personal success stories, urging U.S. nutrition leaders to include a true low-carb diet as part of the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.