US readers: Help shape the dietary guidelines, now!

If you’re an American whose health or weight has been improved by keto or low carb eating, we hope you’ll speak up to shape the next version of the US Dietary Guidelines.

Your honest, personalized comments can help guide the process to include taking a harder look at the evidence supporting low carb diets.

Note: The timeline to provide input is short. The US government will close off comments at 11:59 p.m. EDT on Monday May 16, 2022.  Below, we’ve provided simple instructions and a link to add your voice to the review process.

But first, here’s a bit more background about what is happening and why the timing of your input is so critical.

Last month, the United States Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services (USDA-HHS) began the process of reviewing the Dietary Guidelines for 2025 by publishing a list of the scientific questions they propose to address. 

These are the questions that a special committee (so far unnamed) will review in order to create the new version of the guidelines for 2025 to 2030.

Unfortunately, not a single question — not one! — is asked about the science of low carbohydrate diets. If no questions about low carb diets are in the review process, the review committee will not examine the ever-growing body of evidence. In essence, they will ignore research amassed over the last 20 years that supports carbohydrate reduction for weight loss, diabetes management, and improving many other metabolic health issues. 

If the special committee doesn’t review this science, low carb diets will not be included as a healthy option in the next version of the guidelines. 

The current guidelines advise Americans to eat more than 50% of their daily calories as carbohydrates. These guidelines impact medical advice, government nutritional policy, and government programs and services. They even impact the menus in schools, hospitals, nursing homes, army bases, and more.

“We need [to encourage] the government to finally review the science that demonstrates the vast benefits of low-carbohydrate diets in helping people overcome diabetes, improve their cardiovascular health, lose weight, and so much more,” urges Jennifer Friedlin, president of the Nutrition Coalition. 

The Nutrition Coalition is a non-profit educational organization created with the primary goal to ensure that US nutrition policy is based on rigorous scientific evidence. The coalition is leading the effort to get US citizens to submit comments to the Dietary Guideline process, demanding that the set of scientific questions include a question about the evidence for low carb and keto diets.

This is the specific wording the coalition suggests be added to the list of scientific questions:

What is the effect of low-carbohydrate diets (including low-carbohydrate and ketogenic diets, defined altogether as less than 25% of total calories or 100 grams of carbohydrates per day) on overweight/obesity, pre-diabetes/diabetes, and heart disease risk factors?

The coalition suggests that ordinary citizens request that the USDA-HHS include this question about low carb diets in the scientific review and then use their own words to share how their health and weight have improved with this way of eating. 

Since Diet Doctor shares the goal of improving world health based on healthier, evidence-based diets, we are urging supporters to submit a comment by May 16. Please submit a comment, and share this post to encourage others to share their perspectives. 

Here is the link to the commenting process.

Comment here!

For more information see a special page on the issue at The Nutrition Coalition.