For more than a week, spec­u­la­tion has been run­ning ram­pant. Here's how it all start­ed.

On Feb­ru­ary 10, The Wash­ing­ton Post pub­lished a head­line that got a good amount of at­ten­tion: "The US gov­ern­ment is poised to with­draw long­stand­ing warn­ings about cho­les­terol."

Every five years, the De­part­ment of Health and Hu­man Ser­vices, along with the De­part­ment of Agri­cul­ture, is­sues "Di­etary Guide­lines for Amer­i­cans," a fed­er­al pub­li­ca­tion that has far-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tions on what we eat.

The guide­lines af­fect every­thing from the way com­pa­nies can ad­ver­tise their prod­ucts, to what's in your child's school lunch, to the di­et ad­vice of­fered up by near­ly every doc­tor and nu­tri­tion­ist in the coun­try.

Re­mem­ber the food pyra­mid from when you were grow­ing up? To­day's it­er­a­tion, My­Plate, re­lies on these guide­lines as well. They're al­so the ba­sis for the in­for­ma­tion on nu­tri­tion facts la­bels on just about all food pack­ag­ing.

So you can see why so many peo­ple are anx­ious­ly await­ing the 2015 up­date.

The 112-page re­port from 2010 in­clud­ed 23 rec­om­men­da­tions for the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion and six ad­di­tion­al rec­om­men­da­tions for spe­cif­ic pop­u­la­tion groups, such as preg­nant women. The three ma­jor goals em­pha­sised were:

�2 Bal­ance calo­ries with phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty to man­age weight.

�2 Con­sume more of cer­tain foods and nu­tri­ents such as fruits, veg­eta­bles, whole grains, fat-free and low-fat dairy prod­ucts and seafood.

�2 Con­sume few­er foods with sodi­um (salt), sat­u­rat­ed fats, trans fats, cho­les­terol, added sug­ars and re­fined grains.

What's stir­ring the pot now is one bul­let, on one slide (page 7) of thou­sands of slides, shown at one of sev­en pub­lic hear­ings held over the last two years to dis­cuss the lat­est re­vi­sions to the guide­lines:

"Cho­les­terol is not con­sid­ered a nu­tri­ent of con­cern for over­con­sump­tion."

In­side the ad­vi­so­ry re­port

Sure enough, there it is, buried on page 91 of the 572-page Sci­en­tif­ic Re­port of the 2015 Di­etary Guide­lines Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee: "Pre­vi­ous­ly, the Di­etary Guide­lines for Amer­i­cans rec­om­mend­ed that cho­les­terol in­take be lim­it­ed to no more than 300 mg/day. The 2015 DGAC will not bring for­ward this rec­om­men­da­tion be­cause avail­able ev­i­dence shows no ap­pre­cia­ble re­la­tion­ship be­tween con­sump­tion of di­etary cho­les­terol and serum (blood) cho­les­terol, con­sis­tent with the AHA/ACC (Amer­i­can Heart As­so­ci­a­tion/Amer­i­can Col­lege of Car­di­ol­o­gy) re­port. Cho­les­terol is not a nu­tri­ent of con­cern for over­con­sump­tion."

What has food­ies buzzing is that this is some­what of a tec­ton­ic shift re­gard­ing one of the main nu­tri­tion­al des­ig­na­tions of the foods we eat. Cho­les­terol has been a promi­nent part of di­etary warn­ings and guide­lines since the Amer­i­can Heart As­so­ci­a­tion put the com­pound in its crosshairs more than half a cen­tu­ry ago.

Dr Steven Nis­sen, chair­man of car­dio­vas­cu­lar med­i­cine at the Cleve­land Clin­ic, told CNN: "The idea we need to lim­it sat­u­rat­ed fat and cho­les­terol shift­ed Amer­i­cans from a well-bal­anced di­et to high-sug­ar di­ets, which made peo­ple eat more and get fat­ter."

The re­al­i­ty, ac­cord­ing to Nis­sen, is that on­ly 15 per cent of cir­cu­lat­ing cho­les­terol in the blood comes from what you eat. The oth­er 85 per cent comes from the liv­er.

"So if you go on a di­et," he says, "you're not chang­ing your cho­les­terol very much." Still, nu­tri­tion­ists are not rec­om­mend­ing you go out and binge on cheese­burg­ers and fries.

A lot is rid­ing on this de­ci­sion. Foods that are high in cho­les­terol, like eggs, shrimp and lob­ster, could see a ma­jor uptick in sales. These foods, per­haps lim­it­ed in­side–or ban­ished from–your home, could make a big come­back.

Who's telling you what to eat

The 14 out­side ex­perts who made up the 2015 Di­etary Guide­lines Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee are na­tion­al­ly recog­nised in the fields of nu­tri­tion, med­i­cine and pub­lic health.

In a let­ter to the HHS and US­DA sec­re­taries, 2015 DGAC chair­man Bar­bara Millen high­lights the ma­jor di­et-re­lat­ed health prob­lems she says we're fac­ing and must re­verse.

"About half of all Amer­i­can adults–117 mil­lion in­di­vid­u­als–have one or more pre­ventable (em­pha­sis hers) chron­ic dis­eases that re­late to poor qual­i­ty di­etary pat­terns and phys­i­cal in­ac­tiv­i­ty, in­clud­ing car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases, hy­per­ten­sion, type 2 di­a­betes, and di­et-re­lat­ed can­cers," Millen writes.

"More than two-thirds of adults and near­ly one-third of chil­dren and youth are over­weight or obese. These dev­as­tat­ing health prob­lems have per­sist­ed for decades, strained US health­care costs, and fo­cused the at­ten­tion of our health­care sys­tem on dis­ease treat­ment rather than pre­ven­tion. They call for bold ac­tion and sound, in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions."

Millen hopes the re­port will "es­tab­lish a 'cul­ture of health' at in­di­vid­ual and pop­u­la­tion lev­els and, in so do­ing, make healthy lifestyle choic­es easy, ac­ces­si­ble, af­ford­able and nor­ma­tive–both at home and away from home."

What you should be eat­ing

It's not just what we eat, it's how we eat it.

When look­ing in­to the com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tics of healthy di­ets, the com­mit­tee fo­cused on re­search ex­am­in­ing di­etary pat­terns, be­cause "the to­tal­i­ty of the di­et–the com­bi­na­tions and quan­ti­ties in which foods and nu­tri­ents are con­sumed–may have syn­er­gis­tic and cu­mu­la­tive ef­fects on health and dis­ease."

A healthy di­etary pat­tern is high­er in veg­eta­bles, fruits, whole grains, low- or non­fat dairy, seafood, legumes and nuts; mod­er­ate in al­co­hol; low­er in red and processed meat; and low in sug­ar-sweet­ened foods and drinks and re­fined grains.

The DGAC en­cour­ages di­etary pat­terns that are low in sat­u­rat­ed fat, added sug­ars and sodi­um. The goals for the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion are:

�2 Less than 2,300 mil­ligrams of di­etary sodi­um per day.

�2 Less than 10 per cent of to­tal calo­ries from sat­u­rat­ed fat per day.

�2 A max­i­mum of 10 per cent of to­tal calo­ries from added sug­ars per day.

(cnn.com)