{"id":77003,"date":"2025-12-01T18:18:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T18:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/77003\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T18:18:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T18:18:08","slug":"as-a-cardiologist-i-know-the-dietary-guidelines-are-failing-our-hearts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/77003\/","title":{"rendered":"As a cardiologist, I know the dietary guidelines are failing our hearts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Meals at a restaurant on the UC San Diego campus. (File photo by Chris Stone\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

Heart disease \u2014 affecting\u00a0almost half\u00a0of American adults \u2014 is the\u00a0leading cause of death in the United States, claiming 700,000 lives each year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Opinion<\/a><\/p>\n

As a practicing cardiologist for more than 20 years, I\u2019ve watched patients do everything \u201cby the book.\u201d They eat according to the\u00a0Dietary Guidelines for Americans<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 the federal government\u2019s blueprint for nutrition policy \u2014 and still see their weight climb, blood pressure rise, and heart health deteriorate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The problem isn\u2019t their effort. It\u2019s the guidance itself, which promotes high-carbohydrate, low-fat diets that can actually worsen metabolic health, which can in turn worsen heart disease. Many assume that by following the government\u2019s recommendations they can improve their health \u2014 but, too often, the opposite is true.<\/p>\n

With the next edition of the Dietary Guidelines scheduled for release\u00a0this month, we have a critical opportunity to move beyond outdated orthodoxy and align federal nutrition policy with modern science and clinical experience. Done right, this update can turn back the tide of chronic illness and save lives.<\/p>\n

Since\u00a01980, the Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services have issued the Dietary Guidelines every five years. These recommendations shape not only personal choices but also the food in school cafeterias, military mess halls, hospitals and nursing homes. They inform SNAP and WIC benefits, nutrition education, and even the labels on grocery store shelves.<\/p>\n

From the\u00a0start, however, the guidelines steered Americans in the wrong direction. They marked a sharp departure from prior eating patterns by encouraging Americans to cut back on natural dietary fats and rely more heavily on refined high-carbohydrate foods. Saturated fat \u2014 and cholesterol by extension \u2014 were unjustly stigmatized, while bread, pasta and cereal became\u00a0staples\u00a0of the American diet.<\/p>\n

The recommendations were not made with a metabolically vulnerable population in mind. For people already struggling with insulin resistance, obesity or diabetes, a high-carbohydrate diet frequently only compounds the problem by driving up insulin, promoting visceral fat storage around vital organs, and fueling a cycle of weight gain and chronic disease.<\/p>\n

Four decades later, the guidelines remain out of step with science and with the health needs of the majority of Americans. They impose\u00a0arbitrary caps on saturated fat, despite evidence showing no consistent link to higher rates of heart disease or mortality. They recommend dietary protein\u00a0well below\u00a0optimal levels for most populations. And they direct Americans to get\u00a045-65%\u00a0of their calories from carbohydrates \u2014 sidelining low-carb or ketogenic diet options proven to support weight loss, stabilize blood sugar, and reduce the risk factors that drive heart disease.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Americans are being pushed toward\u00a0metabolically damaging\u00a0eating patterns.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Today,\u00a093%\u00a0of Americans live with metabolic dysfunction \u2014 meaning their bodies struggle to convert food into energy efficiently. This breakdown in basic metabolic processes fuels the country\u2019s epidemic of chronic disease. More than\u00a075%\u00a0of Americans are now overweight or obese. Heart disease mortality rates have\u00a0increased\u00a0from the 2010s to the 2020s, even as cholesterol levels have steadily fallen.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Put plainly: Federal nutrition policy has fallen far short of making Americans healthier. I know this to be true not only from statistics but from my\u00a0own\u00a0patients\u2019 journeys. Many of them ate exactly as federal guidance prescribed and still found themselves gaining weight and developing hypertension, diabetes and heart disease. For years, I resisted the idea that fault could lie with the guidelines.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like most physicians, I was trained to be wary of fat and to consider carbohydrates as the foundation of a healthy diet. I dismissed suggestions that a low-carb or ketogenic diet could improve cardiovascular outcomes.<\/p>\n

But then I tried it myself \u2014 and my own weight, cardiovascular markers, and energy improved. When I cautiously introduced the approach to my patients, I saw transformations I couldn\u2019t ignore: their\u00a0insulin\u00a0sensitivity, blood sugar levels and blood pressure began to improve. These changes struck at the true drivers of\u00a0coronary heart disease\u00a0\u2014 metabolic dysfunction, obesity and type 2 diabetes \u2014 all stronger predictors than cholesterol levels.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Their lives changed without a scalpel or a prescription. And their experiences mirrored what the science was increasingly showing: that the\u00a0old low-fat, high-starch model had it backwards.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A\u00a0review of randomized trials\u00a0found that low-carbohydrate diets significantly improved weight, blood sugar and blood pressure \u2014 the very risk factors that drive heart disease.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another analysis comparing\u00a0different levels of carbohydrate restriction\u00a0showed consistent benefits across degrees of reduction. And, in patients with type 2 diabetes,\u00a0ketogenic approaches\u00a0have dramatically lowered average blood sugar as measured by HbA1c \u2014 a long-term measure of glucose control \u2014 while delivering substantial weight loss, all changes known to reduce cardiovascular complications.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet our national guidelines remain stuck in an outdated paradigm.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The upcoming 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines offers a chance to finally get it right \u2014 to align federal recommendations with the latest, most rigorous evidence. That means prioritizing whole foods, removing limits on saturated fats, optimizing protein intake, and including low-carbohydrate and ketogenic options for the metabolically vulnerable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The nation\u2019s leading killer isn\u2019t inevitable. If the Dietary Guidelines are updated to reflect modern science, millions of Americans could soon be on the path to reclaiming their heart health.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bret Scher, MD, is a board-certified cardiologist and lipidologist, and the founding medical director of the Coalition for Metabolic Health<\/a>.<\/p>\n

READ NEXT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meals at a restaurant on the UC San Diego campus. (File photo by Chris Stone\/Times of San Diego)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[44410,44411,8430,44412,1570,44413,44414,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-77003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-chronic-illness","tag-coalition-for-metabolic-health","tag-diabetes","tag-dietary-guidelines-for-americans","tag-health","tag-heart-disease","tag-high-carbohydrate-diet","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}