A week after the federal government released its latest recommendations for healthful eating, the 2015-20 Dietary Guidelines have touched off a food fight.

Acknowledging the “scientific integrity” of the drafting process has been called into question, Congress has asked the National Academies of Science to review “whether balanced nutrition information is reaching the public” and set aside $1 million for the effort.

Meanwhile, nutritionists, public health specialists and experts in preventive health are vying to critique the government document, fill in its gaps and “spin” the guidelines to support their interests.

Steven Nissen, perhaps the nation’s most influential cardiologist, took aim Monday at the new Dietary Guidelines for sowing public confusion and for lacking the support of rigorous scientific evidence.

Writing in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Nissen scolded the drafters of the guidelines for lifting the long-standing advice on consuming foods high in cholesterol but also suggesting Americans “should eat as little dietary cholesterol as possible.”

“Which version should we believe? How can the same committee arrive at diametrically opposite conclusions?” he wrote.

Nissen also faulted the guidelines’ recommendation for Americans to limit their intake of saturated fat, writing “the best available evidence does not clearly support the widely held belief that Americans should limit saturated fat” in their diets.

The problem, Nissen suggested, is lousy science undergirding good advice on nutrition. He called on the federal government to conduct and underwrite the cost of rigorous clinical trials to determine, for instance, whether saturated fat intake affects such health outcomes as cardiovascular disease.

“Properly performed studies may demonstrate that saturated fat and cholesterol are indeed nutrients of concern, but the opposite conclusion is also possible,” Nissen wrote.

“It is time to transition from the current evidence-free zone to an era where dietary recommendations are based on the same quality evidence that we demand in other fields of medicine.”