Every five years, America's top nutrition experts jockey to be part of a rite of passage in the field. The federal government chooses a small group of researchers to serve on a committee that spends months poring over scientific literature to answer questions such as: What is the relationship between sweetened beverages and risk of type 2 diabetes' And how does eating saturated fat influence a person's chance of heart disease' The end result is something called the Dietary Guidelines for Americans'in other words, the government's official nutrition recommendations. The whole process might seem a bit excessive, if not pointless. Presumably, few Americans even know about this document, and even fewer intentionally use it to guide what they eat. But the recommendations touch the diets of tens of millions of Americans, affecting what food is served in schools and in the military. They also influence the food industry. After the dietary guidelines began more explicitly warning about the...
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