Dr. Donald Layman

I think the origins of it came out of the end of World War II, and people started getting more oriented to public health and the well-being of everyone, and people realized that heart disease was a real cause of mortality, and so they started to look for reasons why.

Also, during World War II, they were interested in the fact that there are

a million people, men overseas fighting a war and they had to have some idea of how much food to send.

So I think those were the two things that really brought nutrition to the forefront.

How do we define what people need?

Protein and healthy fats are essential.

And we're wrongly discouraged in prior dietary guidelines.

What Kennedy is saying is what we need to base our science on is well-controlled studies.

And if we don't have well-controlled studies, we shouldn't make conclusive answers.

It's good to be back, even on the Roadshow.

No, that's been the RDA forever.

And that RDA hasn't changed, but we've highlighted the fact that an optimal range is probably about twice that, 50%, you know, 1.2 to 1.6, so 50 to 100% above the minimum.

Yeah.

The old guidelines in my mind were more about what you shouldn't eat than what you should eat.

It was using the minimum protein intake of 0.8 grams per kg, which is just a minimum to prevent deficiencies.

But it was about not eating cholesterol, not eating saturated fat, not eating sugar, not eating any salt-containing products.

So it was all about what you shouldn't eat.

They did have some guidelines about eating a variety of foods and things like that and maintaining normal weight.

But really, when they started structuring what people should do, it was really about avoiding anything that had fat in it and eating things that had a lot of carbohydrates.

I think the origins of it came out of the end of World War II and people started getting more aware.