Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by isoskeles 2578 days ago
> official recommended maximums

I don't know what this means. Are you referring to the manual that came with human existence or are you referring to what the FDA says?

1 comments

My comment above explicitly describes what I refer to as "official recommended maximums": the maximum daily intakes recommended by the AHA and WHO (among others around the globe), presumably through an audit by domain experts of the totality of epidemiological and clinical evidence, together with an unknown amount of interference from non-scientific interests.

To address your analogy, researchers are in a sense writing the Missing Manual for Humans, as our species didn't come with one.

You're free to accept or refute these recommendations, but I personally am inclined to put at least some trust into their collective efforts. Or if you trust different recommendations more so than these, I'd love to see them.

I agree with the recommendations, I just disagree with referring to them as "official."

This mentality coupled with incorrect recommendations helped the trend of "fat free" foods that would be high in sugar, not that long ago either.

The WHO is a 71-year-old UN agency whose constitution has been signed by 61 countries. One of the organizations it incorporated was the Office International d'Hygiène Publique (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_International_d%27Hygi%...), an international public-health organization.

I have to say I find your pushback at the term "official" perplexing. Why do you disagree with this descriptor? They're literally official. It doesn't get more official than this. Sure, they're sometimes wrong, as your fat-free reference suggests, but that's beside the point.