美官方膳食指南放開對脂肪與膽固醇的限制

A nutrition advisory panel that helps shape the country’s official dietary guidelines eased some of its previous restrictions on fat and cholesterol on Thursday and recommended sharp new limits on the amount of added sugar that Americans should consume.

協助制定美國官方膳食指南的營養顧問小組週四發表聲明，表示應適當放寬此前提出的對脂肪和膽固醇的限制，並就美國人攝入的添加糖量的上限提出了嚴苛的新建議。

The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which convenes every five years, followed the lead of other major health groups like the American Heart Association that in recent years have backed away from dietary cholesterol restrictions and urged people to cut back on added sugars.

近年來，美國心臟協會(American Heart Association)等主要衛生組織逐漸放開了對膳食膽固醇的限制，並敦促美國人民減少添加糖的攝入量。如今，美國膳食指南諮詢委員會（Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee，每五年召開一次會議）也加入了他們的行列。

The panel said that Americans were eating too much salt, sugar and saturated fat, and not enough foods that fit a “healthy dietary pattern,” like fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains, fish and moderate levels of alcohol. Members of the panel said they wanted Americans to focus less on individual nutrients and more on overall patterns of eating, such as a Mediterranean-style diet, which is associated with lower rates of heart disease and stroke.

該顧問小組指出，美國人飲食中的鹽、糖和飽和脂肪過多，但符合“健康飲食模式”的食物，如水果、蔬菜、堅果、全穀物製品、魚卻不足，另外飲酒也不夠節制。該小組成員表示，他們希望美國人不要過於關注單一的營養成分，應該更注意飲食的整體模式，如地中海式飲食（該飲食模式與較低的心臟病和中風率相關）。

The panel singled out added sugars as one of its major concerns. Previous dietary guidelines have included warnings about eating too much added sugar, but for the first time the panel recommended that Americans limit it to no more than 10 percent of daily calories — roughly 12 teaspoons a day for many adults — because of its link to obesity and chronic disease.

該小組將添加糖單獨挑出來作爲其重點關注對象。以往的膳食指南都警告人們不宜食用過多的添加糖，但現在，該小組首次建議，鑑於其與肥胖和慢性疾病有關，美國人應將添加糖攝入量控制在每天熱量總攝入量的10%或以下——對於大多數成年人而言，相當於每天約12茶匙。

Americans consume 22 to 30 teaspoons of added sugar daily, half of which come from soda, juices and other sugary drinks. The panel said sugary drinks should be removed from schools, and it endorsed a rule proposed by the Food and Drug Administration that would require a distinct line for added sugars on food nutrition labels, a change the food and sugar industries have aggressively fought.

美國人平均每天的添加糖攝入量約爲22至30茶匙，其中一半來自汽水、果汁和其他含糖飲料。該小組表示應將含糖飲料驅逐出校園，並支持美國食品和藥品監督管理局(Food and Drug Administration, FDA)提出的“在食品營養標籤上將添加糖單列一行明確標識”的規定，而食品和食糖行業則激烈地反對這一改變。

Many experts, including some who disagreed with the panel’s cautions on salt and saturated fat, applauded its stronger stance on added sugars.

這種對添加糖的更強硬的態度，贏得了許多專家，包括一些不同意該小組關於鹽和飽和脂肪的警示意見的專家們的贊同。

“That was one of the high points of these guidelines, and something that was sorely needed,” said Dr. Ronald M. Krauss, the director of atherosclerosis research at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute. “There is a striking excess of added sugar intake in all age groups across the population.”

“這是該指南的一大亮點，而且，目前也正迫切需要如此，”兒童醫院奧克蘭研究所(Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute)動脈粥樣硬化研究的負責人羅納爾·M·克勞斯博士(Ronald M. Krauss)說。“鑑於美國人各年齡組中添加糖的攝入量都明顯過剩，這些措施很有必要。”

Dr. Krauss, the former chairman of the American Heart Association’s dietary guidelines committee, said that the advisory panel’s emphasis on overall dietary patterns was “a tremendous move in the right direction.” As part of that move, the panel dropped a suggestion from the previous guidelines that Americans restrict their total fat intake to 35 percent of their daily calories.

克勞斯博士是美國心臟協會膳食指南委員會的前任主席，他稱讚該顧問小組開始強調整體飲食模式是“朝正確方向的一大進步”。另一個進步是，該小組廢止了既往指南中“美國人應將脂肪總攝入量限制在每日熱量總攝入量的35%”的建議。

Since they were first issued in 1980, the guidelines have largely encouraged people to follow a low-fat diet, which prompted an explosion of processed foods stripped of fat and loaded with sugar. Studies show that replacing fat with refined carbohydrates like bread, rice and sugar can actually worsen cardiovascular health, so the guidelines encourage Americans to focus not on the amount of fat they are eating but on the type.

最早的一份膳食指南誕生於1980年，其主要目的在於鼓勵人們遵循低脂肪飲食，但它們卻促成了脫脂加糖的加工食品的迅猛發展。研究顯示，以麪包、大米和糖等精製碳水化合物來替代脂肪實際上反而會令心血管健康惡化，所以新指南鼓勵美國人不要只盯着脂肪總量，更重要的是要看他們食用的是何種類型的脂肪。

The guidelines advise people to eat unsaturated fat — the kind found in fish, nuts, and olive and vegetable oils — in place of saturated fat, which occurs primarily in animal foods.

指南建議人們以不飽和脂肪——也就是魚、堅果、橄欖油和植物油中所含那種——來代替主要存在於動物性食物中的飽和脂肪。

The panel also dropped a longstanding recommendation that Americans restrict their intake of dietary cholesterol from foods like eggs and shrimp — a belated acknowledgment of decades of research showing that dietary cholesterol has little or no effect on the blood cholesterol levels of most people.

此外，該小組還撤銷了一條久已有之的建議：“美國人應限制膳食膽固醇的攝入量（主要來源於蛋類、蝦等食物）”。幾十年來，多項研究顯示，膳食膽固醇對大多數人的血液膽固醇水平很少或完全沒有影響，現在這些研究結果終於獲得了遲來的認可。

“For many years, the cholesterol recommendation has been carried forward, but the data just doesn’t support it,” said Alice H. Lichtenstein, the vice chairwoman of the advisory panel and a professor of nutrition science and policy at Tufts University.

該顧問小組的副主席、塔夫茨大學(Tufts University)的營養科學和政策學教授艾麗斯·H·利希滕斯坦(Alice H. Lichtenstein)說：“多年來，人們一直秉承着限制膳食膽固醇的建議，但是研究數據卻並不支持它。”

Dr. Krauss said that some people experience a rise in blood cholesterol after eating yolks and other cholesterol-rich foods. But these “hyper-responders” are such a minority — roughly a few percent of the population — that they do not justify broad restrictions on cholesterol intake.

克勞斯博士承認，有些人在食用蛋黃等富含膽固醇的食物後血液膽固醇水平會升高。但這些“超應答者(hyper-responders)”在總人口中的比例極小——大約百分之幾，因此不能以他們爲由來普遍地限制膽固醇攝入。

The advisory panel does not issue the official guidelines. Its report is sent to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture, which publish Dietary Guidelines for Americans every five years. The agencies usually adhere very closely to the panel’s recommendations.

該顧問小組並未發佈官方指南。但其報告已發送至美國衛生和公衆服務部(Department of Health and Human Service)和農業部(Department of Agriculture)，也就是每五年一次發佈《美國膳食指南》(Dietary Guidelines for Americans)的部門。這些機構通常都會嚴格遵循該小組的建議。

Although consumers rarely pay direct attention to the guidelines, they nonetheless influence the diets of tens of millions of people. The guidelines shape the menus of the school lunch program, which feeds more than 30 million children each school day, and they are incorporated into national food assistance programs like WIC and SNAP.

雖然消費者很少會直接關注這些指南，但它們仍然影響着上千萬人的飲食。膳食指南指導着校園午餐工程食譜的設計，也就是說，它們與每個教學日裏超過3000萬兒童的飲食息息相關；此外，它們還被納入了WIC（Women, Infants and Children，即婦女、嬰兒及兒童營養計劃）和SNAP（補充營養援助計劃）等全國性的食品援助計劃。

The advisory panel included the vegetarian diet as an example of what it called a healthy eating pattern, noting that a plant-based diet is also more sustainable, with less of an impact on the environment. But critics questioned whether the guidelines might overstep the mandate to focus on health and nutrition.

顧問小組還將素食納入了健康飲食模式的範例，並指出以植物爲主的飲食習慣更具有可持續性，對環境的不良影響較小。但也有批評者懷疑這些指南是否逾越了其注重健康和營養的基本職責。

“It appears the advisory committee was more interested in addressing what’s trendy among foodies than providing science-based advice for the average American’s diet,” said Howard Hill, a veterinarian and president of the National Pork Producers Council.

美國豬肉生產者協會(National Pork Producers Council)主席，獸醫霍華德·希爾(Howard Hil)說：“看樣子，與爲普通美國人提供基於科學的膳食建議相比，顧問委員會對研究美食家中的流行趨勢倒是更有興趣。”

The advisory panel was also criticized for its advice against saturated fat, which has been challenged by several recent studies. Dr. James DiNicolantonio, a cardiovascular scientist at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute, said that replacing saturated fat with the polyunsaturated fats in vegetable oils could worsen blood cholesterol levels and raise cancer and heart disease risk.

根據最近的幾項研究結果，也有人對該顧問小組反對飽和脂肪的意見提出了批評。聖路加中美心臟學院(Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute)的心血管研究專家詹姆斯·迪尼古拉安東尼奧(James DiNicolantonio)表示，以植物油中的多不飽和脂肪替代飽和脂肪可能對血液膽固醇水平造成更糟糕的影響，並增加患癌症和心臟病的風險。

“The recommendations on saturated fat are a farce,” he said.

“有關飽和脂肪的建議簡直是一場笑話，”他說。

Adele Hite, a registered dietitian and spokeswoman for the nonprofit Healthy Nation Coalition, said that in the decades since their inception, the guidelines had played a direct role in the explosion of obesity and chronic disease by steering people away from nutritious whole foods like meat, eggs and butter.

非營利性組織健康國家聯盟(Healthy Nation Coalition)的註冊營養師兼發言人阿黛爾·海特(Adele Hite)表示，自其誕生起，幾十年來這些指南對肥胖症和慢性疾病的爆發負有直接責任，因爲它們一直在驅使人們遠離營養豐富的天然食品(whole foods)，如肉類、蛋類和黃油等。

Since the 1980s, Americans over all have been eating more grains, produce, cereals and vegetable oils, while generally lowering their intake of red meat, whole milk and eggs, Ms. Hite said, and yet the population is fatter and sicker than ever.

海特女士指出，20世紀80年代以來，美國人的粗糧、農產品、穀物和植物油攝入量普遍增加，而紅肉、全脂牛奶和雞蛋的攝入量則有所降低，但總體而言，美國人健康情況卻比以往更糟了，肥胖問題也比之前任何時候都更加嚴重。

“Despite the unavoidable conclusion that the guidelines have failed in some fundamental way,” she said, “the response from the advisory committee seems to be that an even more restricted list of acceptable foods will, this time around, do the trick.”

“由此必然得出這樣一個結論：這些指南在某些最根本的方面非常失敗，”她說。“但看顧問委員會的反應，他們似乎以爲這次制定出更加嚴格的‘建議食物清單’就可以解決問題。”