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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.
协助制定美国官方膳食指南的营养顾问小组周四发表声明，表示应适当放宽此前提出的对脂肪和胆固醇的限制，并就美国人摄入的添加糖量的上限提出了严苛的新建议。
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.
近年来，美国心脏协会(American Heart Association)等主要卫生组织逐渐放开了对膳食胆固醇的限制，并敦促美国人民减少添加糖的摄入量。如今，美国膳食指南咨询委员会（Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee，每五年召开一次会议）也加入了他们的行列。
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.
该顾问小组指出，美国人饮食中的盐、糖和饱和脂肪过多，但符合“健康饮食模式”的食物，如水果、蔬菜、坚果、全谷物制品、鱼却不足，另外饮酒也不够节制。该小组成员表示，他们希望美国人不要过于关注单一的营养成分，应该更注意饮食的整体模式，如地中海式饮食（该饮食模式与较低的心脏病和中风率相关）。
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.
该小组将添加糖单独挑出来作为其重点关注对象。以往的膳食指南都警告人们不宜食用过多的添加糖，但现在，该小组首次建议，鉴于其与肥胖和慢性疾病有关，美国人应将添加糖摄入量控制在每天热量总摄入量的10%或以下——对于大多数成年人而言，相当于每天约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.
美国人平均每天的添加糖摄入量约为22至30茶匙，其中一半来自汽水、果汁和其他含糖饮料。该小组表示应将含糖饮料驱逐出校园，并支持美国食品和药品监督管理局(Food and Drug Administration, FDA)提出的“在食品营养标签上将添加糖单列一行明确标识”的规定，而食品和食糖行业则激烈地反对这一改变。
Many experts, including some who disagreed with the panel’s cautions on salt and saturated fat, applauded its stronger stance on added sugars.
这种对添加糖的更强硬的态度，赢得了许多专家，包括一些不同意该小组关于盐和饱和脂肪的警示意见的专家们的赞同。
“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.”
“这是该指南的一大亮点，而且，目前也正迫切需要如此，”儿童医院奥克兰研究所(Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute)动脉粥样硬化研究的负责人罗纳尔·M·克劳斯博士(Ronald M. Krauss)说。“鉴于美国人各年龄组中添加糖的摄入量都明显过剩，这些措施很有必要。”
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.
克劳斯博士是美国心脏协会膳食指南委员会的前任主席，他称赞该顾问小组开始强调整体饮食模式是“朝正确方向的一大进步”。另一个进步是，该小组废止了既往指南中“美国人应将脂肪总摄入量限制在每日热量总摄入量的35%”的建议。
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诞生于1980年，其主要目的在于鼓励人们遵循低脂肪饮食，但它们却促成了脱脂加糖的加工食品的迅猛发展。研究显示，以面包、大米和糖等精制碳水化合物来替代脂肪实际上反而会令心血管健康恶化，所以新指南鼓励美国人不要只盯着脂肪总量，更重要的是要看他们食用的是何种类型的脂肪。
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.
指南建议人们以不饱和脂肪——也就是鱼、坚果、橄榄油和植物油中所含那种——来代替主要存在于动物性食物中的饱和脂肪。
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，该小组还撤销了一条久已有之的建议：“美国人应限制膳食胆固醇的摄入量（主要来源于蛋类、虾等食物）”。几十年来，多项研究显示，膳食胆固醇对大多数人的血液胆固醇水平很少或完全没有影响，现在这些研究结果终于获得了迟来的认可。
“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.
该顾问小组的副主席、塔夫茨大学(Tufts University)的营养科学和政策学教授艾丽斯·H·利希滕斯坦(Alice H. Lichtenstein)说：“多年来，人们一直秉承着限制膳食胆固醇的建议，但是研究数据却并不支持它。”
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.
克劳斯博士承认，有些人在食用蛋黄等富含胆固醇的食物后血液胆固醇水平会升高。但这些“超应答者(hyper-responders)”在总人口中的比例极小——大约百分之几，因此不能以他们为由来普遍地限制胆固醇摄入。
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.
该顾问小组并未发布官方指南。但其报告已发送至美国卫生和公众服务部(Department of Health and Human Service)和农业部(Department of Agriculture)，也就是每五年一次发布《美国膳食指南》(Dietary Guidelines for Americans)的部门。这些机构通常都会严格遵循该小组的建议。
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.
虽然消费者很少会直接关注这些指南，但它们仍然影响着上千万人的饮食。膳食指南指导着校园午餐工程食谱的设计，也就是说，它们与每个教学日里超过3000万儿童的饮食息息相关；此外，它们还被纳入了WIC（Women, Infants and Children，即妇女、婴儿及儿童营养计划）和SNAP（补充营养援助计划）等全国性的食品援助计划。
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.
顾问小组还将素食纳入了健康饮食模式的范例，并指出以植物为主的饮食习惯更具有可持续性，对环境的不良影响较小。但也有批评者怀疑这些指南是否逾越了其注重健康和营养的基本职责。
“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.
美国猪肉生产者协会(National Pork Producers Council)主席，兽医霍华德·希尔(Howard Hil)说：“看样子，与为普通美国人提供基于科学的膳食建议相比，顾问委员会对研究美食家中的流行趋势倒是更有兴趣。”
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.
根据最近的几项研究结果，也有人对该顾问小组反对饱和脂肪的意见提出了批评。圣路加中美心脏学院(Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute)的心血管研究专家詹姆斯·迪尼古拉安东尼奥(James DiNicolantonio)表示，以植物油中的多不饱和脂肪替代饱和脂肪可能对血液胆固醇水平造成更糟糕的影响，并增加患癌症和心脏病的风险。
“The recommendations on saturated fat are a farce,” he said.
“有关饱和脂肪的建议简直是一场笑话，”他说。
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.
非营利性组织健康国家联盟(Healthy Nation Coalition)的注册营养师兼发言人阿黛尔·海特(Adele Hite)表示，自其诞生起，几十年来这些指南对肥胖症和慢性疾病的爆发负有直接责任，因为它们一直在驱使人们远离营养丰富的天然食品(whole foods)，如肉类、蛋类和黄油等。
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世纪80年代以来，美国人的粗粮、农产品、谷物和植物油摄入量普遍增加，而红肉、全脂牛奶和鸡蛋的摄入量则有所降低，但总体而言，美国人健康情况却比以往更糟了，肥胖问题也比之前任何时候都更加严重。
“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.”
“由此必然得出这样一个结论：这些指南在某些最根本的方面非常失败，”她说。“但看顾问委员会的反应，他们似乎以为这次制定出更加严格的‘建议食物清单’就可以解决问题。”
