U.S. government-issued dietary recommendations continue to evolve over time. In a special article published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, an obesity theorist and cardiovascular health researchers claim that the main source of dietary information used by the U.S. Government’s 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) is scientifically flawed because the underlying data are primarily informed by memory-based dietary assessment methods (M-BMs) (eg, interviews and surveys). In an editorial response nutrition experts suggest that the purported flaws are well-appreciated by nutritional researchers and can be mitigated by using multiple data sources, resulting in valid data.
The data under scrutiny come from the “What We Eat in America” and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (WWEIA/NHANES), a five-decade long study of American’s diet and exercise behaviors. In this case the standard M-BMs employed include asking participants to recall what they consumed during the last 24 hours (24HRs) as well as completion of food frequency questionnaires (FFQs). It is the authors’ contention that these data suffer from five major and potentially fatal flaws.
Lead author Edward Archer, PhD, of the Office of Energetics, Nutrition Obesity Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, and co-authors Gregory Pavela, PhD, and Carl J. Lavie, MD, from the Department of Cardiovascular Diseases, John Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute, Ochsner Clinical School – the University of Queensland School of Medicine, New Orleans, LA, present a large body of evidence to support their conclusions:
- 1. The vast majority of the WWEIA/NHANES data are physiologically implausible (i.e., incompatible with life) and therefore are not valid estimates of food and beverage consumption.
2. Human memory and recall are too inaccurate and imprecise to be used as tools to collect scientific data.