Stewart Truswell Takes Stand Against NHMRC's Misleading Guidelines on Fats

Emeritus Professor Stewart Truswell has taken a stand against the peak nutrition body, NHMRC's (National Health and Medical Research Council) new draft dietary guidelines, writes The Australian in a recently published article entitled 'New guidelines on fat misleading, says expert' written by Sue Dunlevy. The draft national nutritional guidelines contend that Australians should limit 'bad' fats (saturated and trans fats) in their diet, and include small amounts of 'good' fats (monosaturated and polyunsaturated fats). Truswell, along with Peter Clifton (co-author of The CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet), the Heart Foundation and the Dietitians Association of Australia are all pushing for the wording of the guidelines to be changed to read "Australians should replace foods high in saturated fats with foods rich in unsaturated fats". Stuart commented that the reasoning behind such change, is the incorrect assumption of the guidelines that 'obesity can be beaten by a low-fat diet when, in fact, a low-calorie diet - including reducing the intake of starches - is more important.'

Dunlevy also highlighted Stewart's concern regarding the minor recognition of indigenous nutrition despite Aboriginal Australians having among the worst nutrition in the Australia, and acknowledged him as 'the nutrition expert who helped write the current version of the National Health and Medical Research Council's dietary guidelines.' We congratulate Stewart on raising awareness about such an important component of the Australian lifestyle.

Read more about the response to the new guidelines here.