2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines Overview
Everything You Need to Know About the Government’s New Dietary Advice for Americans
This past week, the US government released the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines. Updated every five years, those dietary guidelines offer advice on healthy eating. Here’s everything you need to know about the new changes.
What Are the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines?
These new dietary guidelines arrived with much anticipation in January 2016. Many are already calling them controversial.
Following the release of the guidelines, an open question period took place during which nutrition and diet experts launched an unprecedented number of remarks.
Some of the general trends of the dietary guidelines include advising Americans to follow these suggestions:
— Eat A Variety Of Fruits And Vegetables
— Eat A Variety Of Grains (at least half of which should be whole)
— Eat A Variety Of Proteins (including lean meats, seafood, and nuts)
— Stay Below A Specific Cap On Saturated Fats And Trans Fats, Added Sugars, And Sodium. Specifically, Americans should consume less than 10% of their daily calories from added sugars, along with less than 10% of your daily calories from saturated fat and less than 2,300mg per day of sodium
— Take Low And No-fat Dairy Products
— No Limit On The Consumption Of Red Meat And Processed Meat
— Drink Alcohol Moderately (up to one drink per day for women and up to two drinks per day for men)
The recommendations are released as a joint effort every five years by the American Health and Human Services (HHS) and US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The Controversy
Most of the guidelines in the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines are straightforward: eat a healthy, balanced diet while limiting your consumption of dangerous ingredients like saturated fats and sodium.
But two of the guidelines have proven to be especially controversial, and now resulting in a lawsuit. Dietitians have a problem with two of the recommendations on the list:
— Take low and no-fat dairy products: Some critics believe this is outdated advice. After decades of believing that low-fat dairy products were healthier, research emerged in 2015 that showed people who ate full-fat dairy products were no more likely to develop cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes than those who stick to low-fat dairy. That research was published in the European Journal of Nutrition. That research also showed that there was no correlation between the amount of fat in your dairy and your risk of becoming obese or overweight.
— No limit on the consumption of red meat and processed meat: Red meat and processed meat have both been strongly linked to health problems, including heart disease and cancer. Dietitians advised the government to include restrictions on red meat in their latest diet plan. Instead of explicitly limiting red meat, the government chose instead to bundle it under the saturated fat limit: since some meats are higher in saturated fats than others, you’re forced to limit your consumption anyway if you’re sticking to the Dietary Guidelines.
You can view the entire 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines at Health.gov here: http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/
The complete report includes recommendations about vegetarianism, recommended caloric intake per day for men and women, and the best sources of nutrients like potassium, calcium, vitamin D, and fiber.
You will see they waste no time in being blunt that health and nutrition are very closely linked and related. They are going to cover the what it is vs what it is not and how they came to developing as well as implementing the new dietary guidelines for Americans in 2016 and beyond based on current scientific literature and evidence.
Below is a mini 3 chapter roadmap you can ride in discovering the USA's 2016 dietary guidelines edition:
Chapter 1. Key Elements of Healthy Eating Patterns
They are going to talk about the components of dietary principles and the recognition of healthy eating patterns. By knowing the necessary associations between eating patterns and dietary components, they feel the road to good health will be easier to follow. The Vegetarian and Mediterranean diets were topics of special interest here.
Chapter 2. Shifts Needed To Align With Healthy Eating Patterns
Chapter 3. Everyone Has a Role in Supporting Healthy Eating Patterns
What does everyone think about the new dietary details issued today by the American government?
From the outside looking in, as we are just in the beginning stages of these changes, it is a step in the right dieting direction overall.
