Should dietary recommendations be revised

The dietary recommendations of the Second Swiss Nutrition Report are in part based on incomplete knowledge about nutritional patterns of the Swiss population and on controversial results of relations between nutritional status and health, thus do not fulfill completely the WHO requirements for dietary guidelines. A new set of recommendations would not be based on better knowledge. However, efforts to prevent the widespread chronical diseases, e.g. by dietary measures are understandable. We therefore recommend to apply dietary guidelines never without considering their controversial incomplete scientific basis and to prevent by this a possible negative impact of dietary guidelines.