The five overarching guidelines will not be a surprise, with a focus on eating healthy by avoiding saturated fats, sodium and added sugars in favor of nutrient-dense foods. That angle on nutrition advice had never been included in the committee’s report before, and it rubbed a lot of people – the agriculture and meat industry, ahem – the wrong way.
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Those recommendations, released in February, also de-emphasized lean meats in its list of proteins in the American diet.
The new Guidelines also include details on following a Healthy Vegetarian Eating Pattern, including modifications for an entirely vegan eating plan.
New dietary guidelines officially endorsed by the USA government were released early Thursday and were immediately greeted with criticism.
As Vox explains, “The guidelines are used by doctors and nutritionists to give diet advice, by schools to plan lunches, and by manufacturers to calculate nutrition information on food packages”. That suggestion became a source of much controversy, too much for the nutrition advisory document to bear. There has been so much written in the last decade about how the traditional advice on red meat and saturated fat is just, well, plain wrong and based on weak science.
This year, one message the government wants to send is that people should figure out what type of healthy eating style works for them, while still hewing to the main recommendations.
Saturated fats should also make up less than 10 per cent of a day’s food intake, said the guidelines which are released every five years by the US Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services.
“Americans will be familiar with the majority of our findings”, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said in call with reporters.
The 2015 guidelines recommend a “healthy eating pattern” with limited sugar and saturated fat, less salt and more vegetables and whole grains. This does not include naturally occurring sugars such as those consumed as part of milk and fruits. In a blog post, she said she would have preferred an explicit call to limit sugar-sweetened beverages. Most of us consume far more – about 3,440 milligrams daily on average – much of it in the form of foods like pizzas, soups, breads and cured meats. This guideline isn’t as strict as what the American Heart Association suggests – it recommends about half that – but the limit is significant. Still, advice buried deeper in the guidelines says that those with high blood pressure and prehypertension could benefit from a steeper reduction.
“Although its recommendations were rejected, we still need to know how the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee could be so easily swayed by industry”, Dr. Barnard said, “but the fact that the Government has retained cholesterol warnings is heartening”. Some more recent studies have shown little relationship between heart disease and how much dietary cholesterol one eats.
Still, egg lovers aren’t completely off the hook.
Michael Jacobson, president of the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, said the group was “disappointed that the guidelines downplayed the importance of consuming less dietary cholesterol, especially from eggs”, but said that overall the advice “is sound, sensible and science-based”.
Essentially, the new guidelines nudge USA nutritional policy toward a traditional Mediterranean diet, which emphasizes consumption of fruits and vegetables, nuts and legumes drenched in such fat sources as olive, nut, canola and soybean oils.
Senior USDA and HHS officials commented on the omission of red and processed meat limits mentioning that “some meats are higher in saturated fats than others, which is a nutrient we recommend limiting”. And while lean meats are promoted, the government does suggest certain populations, such as teen boys and adult men, should reduce their meat intake and eat more vegetables. Government data show that males from 14 to 70 consume more than recommended amounts of meat, eggs and poultry, while women are more in line with advised amounts.
Congress also got involved in the effort, with some Republicans charging the guidelines marked an attempt by the Obama administration to tell Americans what to eat.
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“The 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee report has planted a very important seed that I hope others will see blossom and thrive”, says Perez-Escamilla.
