Balancing Health and Benefits

The Scientific Paper:

Willard C. Willett. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. (Am J Prev Med) Nov 29 (4) pp. 320-321. 2005.

Review This Scientific Paper’s Abstract:
There is no free access to this Comment on the Internet. The reader must instead get a hard copy from the library.

The Purpose of this Study:
This Harvard scientist comments on several, peer-reviewed, scientific papers in the November, 2005 edition of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. These papers attempt to present a detailed analysis of possible health effects from U.S. government policies to change the types and amounts of fish certain Americans eat. These government policies offer both potential good and bad points.

Some Background, Methods, Results, Caveats, and Other Select Points:

• A Harvard scientist wrote this comment that was published in a peer-reviewed, scientific journal in 2005.
• The Comment states that these papers in the November, 2005 edition of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine support current recommendations that focus on changes in the type of fish eaten by women of childbearing age. The papers also highlight concerns that educational messages and U.S. policy implementation must be carefully thought-out to avoid miscues about what the public believes it hears - and also what the public does next based on what they believe they hear.
• The recent decreases in fish eating in this country is likely prompted by not only fears about mercury, but also by a widely-publicized paper stating that farm-raised salmon contains measurable amounts of a certain type of harmful, chemical pollutant. That paper was particularly troublesome because the implied bad health effects were based on calculations never actually done and also on very small lifetime risks for the fish eating people.
• In contrast, the health benefits of eating salmon are based on data from people test subjects at the amounts and types of fish eaten. These health benefits are likely to be at least 100-fold greater than the estimates of harm - which may not exist at all.
• Monitoring chemical pollutants in foods is important. However, there must be balance so that findings in places where widespread publicity is likely are accompanied by some good-faith, plain simple English that balances the likely risks and benefits of eating more or less of the foods being discussed.
• Although aquaculture – here, farmed-fish - has many potential bad impacts on the Earth, it needs to be carefully developed because fish convert fish food to protein for people to eat far more efficiently than do land animals. Fish are cold-blooded that float. They use no energy to keep warm - and only a little energy to move around.
• Even large increases in farmed-fish are unlikely to meet the global “good” fatty acid needs, because many people in the world eat very little fish. Much of the world will have to get their good, fatty acids from sources other than fish. Luckily, there are many good plant sources for these good, fatty acids including soybean and canola oils.
• The United States and many other countries routinely treat these plant oils in ways that destroy these good, fatty acids. For these countries, the most rapid way to increase the amounts of good, fatty acids eaten is to change their routine treatments of soybean, canola, and similar oils. This would also virtually eliminate the bad trans-fatty acids from their citizens’ diets.
• Whether the certain, good, fatty acids in plants can actually provide all the health benefits of the good, fatty acids from eating fish is now an important topic among scientists. The benefits of eating fish may decrease in the U.S. because Americans will eat more good, fatty acids from plants due to changes in treating soybean oil.

  1. The American food supply constantly changes.
  
  2. Human nutrition is complex.

  3. Therefore, risk–benefit analyses for foods cannot stand still.

• The author makes some additional comments about how dairy products are yet another example in human nutrition where potential competing risks and benefits exist.

• The recent, U.S. dietary guidelines recommend that everyone drink more milk - or similar dairy products - equal to three glasses per day. If followed, this recommendation will lead to radical changes in the American diet. The average man drinks less than one serving of milk - or similar dairy product - each day. U.S. milk production would have to double to meet this new demand. This doubling will have major economic and environmental consequences.

• This “drink more milk” recommendation is not based on evidence that it will improve everyone’s health if they drink three glasses of milk each day. It was instead based solely on the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) mandate that the new U.S. dietary guidelines should meet certain required, minimal amounts of calcium, potassium, and other nutrients coming just from food. These certain required minimal amounts of certain nutrients are also not usually based on health outcomes, but rather are solely based on one aspect of how people internally use their food.

• The health consequences of eating a lot of dairy products are complex and not fully understood.

  1. Although people need some calcium, drinking a lot of milk is not always associated with a lower risk of broken bones.

  2. On the other hand, many studies of eating more dairy product have found increased risks of advanced or fatal prostate cancer.

  3. If people eat twice as much dairy products, then large amounts of saturated fat would be introduced into the food supply - even though the recommendation is to eat low-fat dairy products.

A Bottom Line:
U.S. governmental regulations require detailed economic analyses. Comparable analyses of health risks and benefits are not required even for the official U.S. dietary guidelines, which have huge policy implications for government food programs.

Find This Scientific Paper for Your Review:
Balancing Health and Benefits. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. (Am J Prev Med) Nov 29 (4) pp. 320-321. 2005.