The guidelines also recommend that you eat more fruit, vegetables and whole wheat, and highlight that most Americans do not have a very healthy diet, and many are overweight and at an increased risk of heart disease and other illnesses.
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But they’ve dropped longstanding advice to limit cholesterol from eggs and other foods in its “key recommendations”. Common features of both diets include fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and fish. And keep sugar, fats and salt in moderation. “By focusing on small shifts in what we eat and drink, eating healthy becomes more manageable”.
Eat less sugar. That’s not exactly new advice, but new specific guidelines were released by the USDA and Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday. He says Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack did a good job of avoiding a misplaced agenda and brought forward reasonable recommendations. The officials although removed a prior limit on daily cholesterol intake and said that lean meat and poultry are part of a healthy diet.
But quarreling isn’t unusual when it comes to American diet recommendations. The guidelines suggest limiting sugar to 10 percent of your daily calories. That’s the equivalent of 1 teaspoon of salt. If that sounds like a lot, know that two mid-size muffins and one cup of sweetened Greek yogurt is all you would need to eat to get to that scary number.
Americans also need to lower salt intake, the government says.
The guidelines also recommend a daily sodium intake of 2,300 milligrams.
Eating less red meat is linked to a lower risk of heart disease and stroke, as well as a lower risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes and some types of cancer, the guidelines say.
This report contains material from The Associated Press.
The updated recommendations also remove the limit on dietary cholesterol. This isn’t as strict as previous guidelines but likely affects most Americans, since the average person consumes 3,400 per day, mostly from processed foods. No amount of Coke-funded health research can massage that stat.
In February, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) – an independent committee made up of experts in nutrition, health, and medicine that helped inform the new guidelines – announced that dietary cholesterol was “not a nutrient of concern“, and has no relation to levels of cholesterol in blood.
Still, egg lovers aren’t completely off the hook. “About half of all American adults-117 million individuals-have one or more preventable chronic diseases, many of which are related to poor quality eating patterns and physical inactivity”, the report states. And there’s no longer a limit on foods high in cholesterol such as eggs.
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“It’s clear to me and my colleagues that the administration wisely listened to the science and dismissed the interests of political activists”, said Alabama Rep. Robert Aderholt, the Republican chairman of the subcommittee that oversees Agriculture Department spending.
