And what does it say about traditional governance that it takes a someone like RFK to actually do anything about it.

A stopped clock is right twice a day. A running clock set incorrectly is correct zero times a day. If you have an incorrect clock, the solution isn't to stop the clock, it's to set it correctly and fix the process

People don't notice "incorrect" as much as "stopped".

Here's hoping that now that we've stopped our incorrect clock, the next step may very well be setting it correctly.

That a majority of your populace not caring about how they're governed is bad for a democratic republic.

or maybe the nutrition guidelines just don't matter that much.

That's clearly true, given people by and large know what's good and bad for them but their consumption choices need to factor in a much larger set of pressing constraints like price, availability, and readiness and more abstract constraints like "am I able to be at home with my child and cook for them or do I need to work a second job to make ends meet?" I will not trust a single word from RFK's mouth until he has something to say about food deserts and prices and a plan to do something about it. Until then, he's done the easiest part which bureaucrats specialize in, which is publishing an updated set of guidelines.

I disagree I think nutrition guidence is extremely important and in the precense of horrible examples nations get really unhealthy. The only country 1st world country not to have really obese people is Japan (~5% obese ~20% overweight). (~35% obsese ~70% overweight US) and I'd wager a large part of that is the fact that kids cook for themselves in school so they learn early what a reasonable meal is. They also learn how to cook not that they do that forever but setting reasonable food expectations is extremely important.

Being obese as a kid is almost causal for being obese later in life[1] as becoming obese screws up a lot of your bodies biology permenantly. You can of course change and become healthier but many lingering symptoms linger regardless of you losing weight. While still 70% obese adults were not obese as children 80% of obese children end up being obese.

Open to other ideas but school meals and peoples relationship with food is extremely important to maintaining weight in my experience.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26696565/

> The only country 1st world country not to have really obese people is Japan (~5% obese ~20% overweight). (~35% obsese ~70% overweight US) and I'd wager a large part of that is the fact that kids cook for themselves in school so they learn early what a reasonable meal is.

There might also be a genetic factor, why japanese are less obese or overweight, because the difference for diabetes patients between US and japan is a lot smaller.

There is no genetic factor because when Japanese people move to the States they are as obese as america's within 2 generation. I want to find the study but I think they end up being physically lighter because of other factors but are just as obese or overweight as americas[1]. The reasoning from the paper is that Japanese 2nd generation adopted western cultures eating habits

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7610102/

We've just spent years being told to trust the experts the government supports, and ignore anything that contradicts the official narrative, including other experts.

It's a good observation, and one I don't think is widely enough appreciated among modern post-COVID, pro-censorship liberals.

Trust primarily by virtue of authority is a bad quality to inculcate in a populace.

Yes, any alternative epistemological basis means you have to deal with Aunt Glenda or Uncle Roy who didn't graduate high school being convinced they're smarter than 'those scientists'.

But we're sliding dangerously close to outsourcing common sense, and the solution isn't encouraging more prostration to expert authority.

It's developing more widespread reasoning from first principles (coupled with curiosity and self-awareness of ones own intellectual limitations).

Common sense is basically completely useless for anything modestly complicated, and Americans are worse than ever at discerning the truth.

What does it say about the current administration that appointed a science-denying halfwit to run HHS and knowingly kill children with his anti-vaxx bullsh*t?

And 52 GOP coward senators that approved the idiot. The only stand out was Mitch McConnell because he was almost paralyzed by polio as a child and knows first hand the damage RFK is doing.

I'm amazed the new guidelines don't recommend a daily portion of roadkill, preferably raw.

I think it says that industries have a lot of power over governments in the US, especially when they are critical to people's survival. The food industry has enormous power, maybe more than any other industry in the US. Few other industries mint their own laws that fly in the face of the constitution as well as the food industry. Ag Gag laws are crazy. People talk about people being labelled terrorists for activities that are obviously not terrorism. Animal Rights activists who go to extremes have been familiar with that for a while now.

Which ones? The guidelines this replaced were "half your plate should be fruits and vegetables, the other half protein and grains (at least half of which should be whole grains)." That's not way different from this.

There are differences: the previous guidelines are very down on saturated fat, for example. But I feel like a lot of people are imagining that this is replacing the old food pyramid with the huge grain section at the bottom bigger than everything else, when that's been gone for over a decade.

Realistically I don't think these guidelines really have much effect at all, except maybe things like school lunch programs that may be downstream of them.

> which ones?

The literal food pyramid that’s printed god knows where and that is recommended in many countries due to US recommendations.

Have you been to the site OP linked?

The pyramid references in the link is from 1992, it even says so on the page. I think that going to war against the recommendations from 1992 feels a bit...dishonest?

How do we marry that "dishonesty" with the fact that the previous food pyramid was the dietary guidelines officially endorsed by the US government, represented in posters and taught in primary school classrooms?

Because there have been different FDA food pyramids since then. The one people popularized hasn't been the recommendation for decades

The 90s food pyramid lasted until 2005, so decades is just about correct. Then it was some myolate something or the other.

But people used the 90s food pyramid everywhere and that was the only one popularly known. The myplate stuff, I guess it wasn’t advertised well by the government, who knows.