Advice that warned consumers of the dangers of a high dairy fat diet was responsible for the UK becoming increasingly dependent on carbohydrates, exacerbating its obesity problem, a review has found.
An official dietary committee warned the public off butter and full fat milk in 1983, as the government sought to lower people’s total fat and saturated fat intake to 30% and 10% of energy consumption respectively. It led to a long term decline in sales of butters and margarines, and almost 20 years of continued growth within the reduced-fat spreads category.
A review published in the online journal Open Heart has now concluded that the recommendations lacked clinical evidence to support them, and should never have been made. Researchers also used six trials available at the time to demonstrate that there was no difference in “heart deaths” arising from higher fat diets.
The advice followed the introduction of similar guidelines in the US six years earlier, leading to both countries being taken down a misconceived dietary route, experts have claimed.
Iain Broom, professor of clinical biochemistry and metabolic medicine at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, said: “[The 1983 recommendations] practically destroyed the dairy industry by suggesting that butter, cheese and full fat milk increased cardiovascular disease risk, when the contrary is true.”
“It is now time for the UK Government to grasp the nettle and stop an uncontrolled experiment, which has gone global and may have had bad outcomes in terms of the obesity explosion and creating a more unhealthy nation with the current idea of ‘healthy eating.’”
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