Late last year, without much fanfare, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published a document entitled “Redesigning the Process for Establishing the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.” It was the kind of thing only a bureaucrat could love: more than 250 pages on roles, workflow, and analytic standards. Here's a sample, chosen at random:
“Employing and modeling different standards of ‘typical consumption'—operationalized by composite nutrient profiles weighted to reflect population averages—are critical, as they help evaluate what the population's average nutrient intake would be if they followed the recommendations under varying circumstances. The approach taken by [the committee] is in contrast with others that rely on especially nutrient-dense foods (such as salmon, apricots, or almonds), which might result in insufficient nutrient intakes when the patterns are put into practice with more typically consumed foods. However, the range of expected nutrient intakes, as well as the average, could be obtained if the variability in intakes were accounted for.”
