279: Dr. Brian Wansink Explains How Government Dietary Guidelines Are Born

Written on August 13, 2009

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Hello and welcome back to The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore!

Today Jimmy shares an interview with, perhaps the jolliest guest we’ve ever had the pleasure to present, Dr. Brian Wansink. Dr. Wansink is not only a food psychologist at Cornell University and a part of the panel creating the 2010 government-based dietary guidelines, he’s also the author of the fascinating book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think.

Besides sharing more laughter and good humor than you can shake a stick at, Dr. Wansink explains some of the psychological strategies his studies have proven are as effective in decreasing excessive food consumption. He also notes that low-carb approaches cause less food consumption. Perhaps most interestingly of all, he shares his experience working with the panel creating the 2010 US government dietary guidelines.

Don’t miss this rare, candid interview with Dr. Brian Wansink!

LINKS MENTIONED IN EPISODE 279
- Dr. Brian Wansink bio
- BrianWansink.com
- Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think
- Official Mindless Eating web site
- The McSubway Study
- Small Plate Movement
- USDA’s Dietary Guidelines For Americans web site
- SmarterLunchrooms.org

Floris Times

This guy is a joke. That’s why he has to laugh all the time about his own work.
Gary Noreen

I agree with the previous commenter. I was appalled.

I urge everyone to submit comments. The committee has had three meetings so far and will have two more before reaching conclusions. They are still accepting comments.

The USDA Dietary Guidelines web site; you can see all the presentations that have been given to the committee to date, you can see all the comments, and even listen to recordings of the meetings.

454 comments have been posted so far. I looked through the summaries of most of the “Carbohydrate” comments and many supported low carb.

454 may sound like a lot of comments, but there weren’t a whole lot of comments relevant to carbohydrates and many of those were self-serving (grain industry, cattlemen, etc.). I think a bunch of us giving personal stories about how we have been helped by low carb and pointing out how harmful the current guidelines have been could make a big impact.

I submitted the following comment today; it has not been displayed yet.

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In 1993, at age 39, I had been following a diet based on USDA guidelines – eating so-called health foods like Snackwells. I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes on April 15 based on a blood glucose measurement of 434 mg/dl (normal is 85). My A1c (long term blood glucose measure) was 18% (normal is 4.5%). I was immediately enrolled in a diabetes course that taught the USDA low-fat high-carbohydrate diet while simultaneously explaining the consequences of eating carbohydrates (blood sugar spikes, hyperinsulinemia, and consequent complications). Needless to say, USDA guidelines did not help. Fortunately for me, the only Type 2 diabetes book in my local library was “Diabetes Type II: Living a Long, Healthy Life Through Blood Sugar Normalization” by Dr. Richard Bernstein, who recommended a very low carbohydrate diet (30 gm/day). Dr. Bernstein’s diet quickly brought my blood glucose under control and dramatically improved my lipid measurements. 16 years later, my most recent A1c measurement was 6.0 without any diabetes medication, I have no diabetes complications, and my lipid levels remain good.
If there is a silver lining to diabetes in this day and age, it is that home glucometers enable diabetics to see for ourselves what works and what does not. We rapidly discover that USDA dietary guidelines are BS, at least for diabetics and for those with metabolic syndrome – up to 25% of the U.S. population.
The abject failure of USDA diet guidelines is laid out thoroughly in Gary Taubes’ book “Good Calories, Bad Calories”. The committee needs to develop fundamentally different guidelines based on real evidence.
I urge the Committee to:
1. Read “Good Calories, Bad Calories” (every member)!
2. Solicit testimony from the Metabolism Society Scientific Board, in particular Dr. Richard Feinman and Dr. Eric Westman, and from Dr. Richard Bernstein.
3. Carefully consider the hormonal implications of dietary recommendations, especially their effects on insulin.
4. Actively review the evidence for current dietary guidelines. Don’t just perpetuate current guidelines; revise or discard those (like low fat and high carbohydrate) that are not supported by the evidence.
http://mike.scott@rogers.com Mike Scott

It is unbelievable just how uninformed a person can remain throughout his life. This man isn’t even interested in the latest information. Suggesting that we trick our minds by eating off smaller plates. Wow! Why didn’t we think of that. Before Atkins I would have about five plates of pasta. Had I eaten off a smaller plate, I would have had ten plates of pasta. This is like advising an alcoholic to drink from smaller glasses to trick his addiction! This man just doesn’t understand! At the moment, I am bicycling with my doctor friend. I have been on Atkins for ten years now. Your readers might be interested to know that I’m sixty-six years old and have never had this much energy in all my life. When I was twenty-six I would never have been able to keep up with me today. This tells me that I was probably not utilizing carbs even then. My doctor friend and I have been cycling the last two weeks and he is now a believer that you don’t need carbs to bike all day long. Get this. Even though he is now a great believer in low carb energy, and is always starving, he is about to go to Weight Watchers. Reducing calories sounds like a long term winning strategy for a man who is always starving! Before I laugh at others I remind myself that it took me more than thirty years of fighting my eating addiction before I even considered going on Atkins! This tells me that even these doctors will eventually smarten up. Keep up the great work Jimmy.
Mike Scott
http://vesnavuynovich.blogspot.com VesnaVK

Great interview, Jimmy! What a coup, to line up such an eminent guest in a position of potential real power. I was impressed at his apparent open-minded, even fairly positive attitude toward carbohydrate restriction. It was great that he said all those complimentary things about the work you do, not just because you personally deserve it, but because it shows that he considers the low-carb approach to good health to be a valid and useful perspective. Maybe he is the best kind of person we can hope to have in there at this stage of the game — an open-minded, smart guy.

Now if we can just get him to read Good Calories, Bad Calories. It didn’t come up during the podcast, but do you know if he’s read it?
http://www.livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog Jimmy Moore

He’s aware of Gary Taubes’ book, Vesna, and I know most of the panel is aware–but they only see him as a journalist and not one worthy of paying any attention to. I don’t know if that is Dr. Wansink’s feeling, but most of the committee thinks that way for sure. We’re getting closer, but still have a LONG way to go.
sss

After Taubes’s explanations, “plate size” and the rest of it is just mindless psuedoscience.
JayCee

Sigh… still long way to go indeed Jimmy.