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In 2002, the National Academies' Institute of Medicine released a report that recommended:

Adults should get 45 percent to 65 percent of their calories from carbohydrates, 20 percent to 35 percent from fat, and 10 to 35 percent from protein.

This is largely a consensus view of the science.

(Dr Caldwell Esselstyn Jr, on the other hand, recommends that no oils should be added to food to avoid heart disease, which might be seen in contradiction to this consensus view.)

Is there sufficient nutritional and epidemiological evidence to support the Institute of Medicine's view about the level of calories that should be obtained from fat for a healthy diet?

Oddthinking
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Count Iblis
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  • What are you asking? Why would FDA not give permission? – mmmmmm Sep 05 '16 at 22:13
  • @Mark [Esselstyn explains it here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_o4YBQPKtQ) – Count Iblis Sep 05 '16 at 22:56
  • The put that in the question - it should stand alone with references to the notable quote. What is the notable quote here? – mmmmmm Sep 05 '16 at 22:57
  • @Mark the quote would be the standard advice as we can e.g. [read here](http://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/Reports/2002/Dietary-Reference-Intakes-for-Energy-Carbohydrate-Fiber-Fat-Fatty-Acids-Cholesterol-Protein-and-Amino-Acids.aspx) "Adults should get 45 percent to 65 percent of their calories from carbohydrates, 20 percent to 35 percent from fat, and 10 to 35 percent from protein. Acceptable ranges for children are similar to those for adults, except that infants and younger children need a slightly higher proportion of fat (25 -40 percent)." – Count Iblis Sep 05 '16 at 23:25
  • According to the [FAQ](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/faq#questions), Skeptics.SE is for researching the evidence behind the claims you *hear or read*. This question appears to be *your own* speculation, and is off-topic. Please edit it to reference a claim that other people are making and flag for moderator attention to re-open (or get 5 re-open votes). – Oddthinking Sep 06 '16 at 02:40
  • Note: Bringing the FDA into this discussion seems to be a red herring, as it introduces a lot of political, procedural issues and speculation about how they might behave which doesn't seem to be relevant. – Oddthinking Sep 06 '16 at 02:42
  • From a general skepticism perspective, your efforts to reverse the burden of proof from the quack to the conventional science seems untenable, but it is kind of moot here at Skeptics.SE where we - because of the nature of the site - always place the burden of proof on the answerer. If you are skeptical of the conventional point of view, make (an accurate version of) that the claim, and leave Dr. Esselstyn out of it. On the other hand, it is probably more valuable to have Esselstyn's claims directly examined without using sophistry to avoid it. – Oddthinking Sep 06 '16 at 02:52
  • In a hard science like physics or chemistry, if you can take the quack position and ask that the conventional position be proven beyond a reasonable doubt via hypothesis testing, it's then a matter of minutes to come up with tons of proof to overrule the null hypothesis to more than 10 sigmas. If this cannot be done in this case then that does not prove the "quack" right, but it does show that this topic has not been rigorously investigated as we're used to do in the hard sciences. – Count Iblis Sep 06 '16 at 02:58
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    @CountIblis: Strawman. No-one is claiming that nutrition and epidemiology are accurate to 10 sigmas. Meanwhile, I still want to simplify this question so it isn't about sophistry and is about examining claims. I'll have a stab at editing it. – Oddthinking Sep 06 '16 at 03:07
  • Are you okay with the (major) edit? I'll reopen if so. – Oddthinking Sep 06 '16 at 03:16
  • @O Yes, that's ok. – Count Iblis Sep 06 '16 at 03:52
  • This is still not OK IMO. First there are now two claims, there should be one. Secondly if we already agree on what the scientific consensus is, there is no need to as a question at all on this site. We can do no better than report the consensus... – Sklivvz Sep 06 '16 at 09:31
  • @Sklivvz Science does not work by consensus, so if there is a preferred scientific opinion on some issue, then there is a record in the peer reviewed journals allowing one to see how rigorous that opinion is. E.g. if I were to doubt that the Higgs boson has been detected, then the answer to my skepticism is not that the scientists say that it has been detected, but that their arguments demonstrate that the null hypothesis has been rejected to more than 5 sigmas. And that fact can be cited from the peer reviewed journals. – Count Iblis Sep 06 '16 at 17:15
  • Of course nutrition may struggle to come up with 5 sigmas evidence, but let's just look if there are any sigmas to be found at all here :) After all, if physicists were more sloppy and 2 sigmas were deemed to be enough and it later turned out that the Higgs was actually not found, no one would have died as a result of that. But suppose that the truth is that using no cooking oils at all (you always get some oil from vegetables and whole grains) gives you better heart health compared to using extra virgin olive oil, then that mistake could have cost the lives of many millions of people. – Count Iblis Sep 06 '16 at 17:31
  • Uhm, [scientific consensus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus) has a specific meaning. Are we in agreement on what the question is asking? Consensus is not the Truth(tm) on a matter. It's, by definition, what the best evidence shows. This site is equally not dedicated to answering with the Truth(tm), but mainly reporting on the evidence, and therefore, on the scientific consensus. – Sklivvz Sep 06 '16 at 19:45
  • Yes, but everything in a tertiary review article like that IoM report can be traced back to primary evidence, so it should be clear on the basis of what hard scientific facts a conclusion is reached. In this case, it's presumably the need for essential fatty acids Omega-3 and Omega-6 and perhaps fats that aid the absorption of fat soluble vitamins. But then you can get these also from vegetables. – Count Iblis Sep 06 '16 at 19:54
  • @Oddthinking In the past we closed questions that ask whether something is healthy as not being about a specific claim. Why did you open the question in it's current form? – Christian Sep 07 '16 at 19:05

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