Kevin Klatt, PhD, RD

A new paper (1) in the Journal of Animal Science was published recently, that analyzed the health of animals fed GMO feed since it was introduced in 1996, until 2011. The study finds that " These field data sets representing over 100 billion animals following the introduction of GE crops did not reveal unfavorable or perturbed trends in livestock health and productivity. No study has revealed any differences in the nutritional profile of animal products derived from GE-fed animals".  This represents billions of meals eaten by billions of animals, of multiple species that show no detrimental health impacts. If you read the whole paper, it moves beyond just the health impacts on animals, and calls for the international scientific and regulatory communities to find common ground on the issue of GMOs: " There is a pressing need for international harmonization of both regulatory frameworks for GE crops and governance of advanced breeding techniques to prevent widespread dis

The blog-o-sphere is certainly replete with interesting theories, regardless of whether they're backed by data. One that I hear constantly is that the dietary guidelines make us sick/fat/diabetic/obese/etc etc. With the recent Annals of Internal Medicine low carb publication , I saw a particularly substantial number of people making claims that recommendations to choose a low-fat diet made us fat. I have a lot of issues with taking a reductionist viewpoint with regard to dietary recommendations, because they were never to 'just' reduce fat intake. But let's play along. Google Images The line of thinking that backs this can be found in this chart: The first dietary guidelines came out in 1980 and advocated reducing fat consumption. If you look at this chart, it appears that this coincides with the obesity epidemic. Does correlation equal causation?  I hope not, or else Nick Cage has some explaining to do: Spurious Correlations: http://www.tylervigen.com/

The low-fat/low-carb wars continue this week with a new publication in the Annals of Internal Medicine (1). Headlines are inflaming the conversation, much like the headline from MedPage Today stating: " Breaking News: Low Carb Beats Low Fat for Weight Loss, CV Risk "  Let's take a look at the study and see what it says: I've detailed the study at the bottom half of this post. For a quick summary, the study was a free-living 12month long trial (in no way whatsoever a metabolic ward trial), that included 148 mostly female individuals, with about half being black, who were randomly assigned to follow one of 2 diets: a low fat ( less than 30% of kcals from fat, 7% from saturated fat, 55% carb - followed NCEP guidelines) and a low carb (less than 40 total net carbs per day). Neither diet was instructed to reduced calories, and they were also told to maintain physical activity levels. Both diets were told to consume 25g/day of fiber, and they received a lot of educat