Deadlines are approaching for another important governmental function involving food.
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans for 2025 are being worked on to provide advice on what to eat and drink to build a healthy diet that can promote healthy growth and development, help prevent diet-related chronic disease, and meet nutrient needs.
The expert Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, whose members were named in early 2023, has met five times, with only one more meeting possible on Sept. 25-26, 2024, if necessary. If there is a sixth meeting, registration details will be made available to the public close to the meeting date.
The committee consists of 20 nationally recognized experts in food and nutrition.
Since 1990, the Secretaries of Agriculture and Health and Human Services have been required by law to publish the Dietary Guidelines for Americans every five years. The expert committee’s recommendations must be handed off to the Secretaries who make the final decisions. The Dietary Guidelines then became the cornerstone of federal food and nutrition guidance.
“The nature of dietary guidance, providing advice on foods and nutrients to eat more or less of, has remained relatively consistent,” according to the government. “However, some of the specific messages have changed as the nutrition science has progressed and the methods used to review the science have advanced.”
The five-year update of the Dietary Guidelines is now winding down and has been a scientifically rigorous, multi-year process.
The U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Agriculture (USDA) have identified proposed scientific questions with input from federal experts and the public and then gained the review of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.
It has been up to the committee members to refine and prioritize the questions, collaborate to develop protocols that describe how they plan to review the science, review and synthesize the evidence based on their protocols, present their scientific findings, and consider public comments.
The Committee’s work culminates in a comprehensive scientific report on the current state of nutrition science and provides independent recommendations to HHS and USDA.
Upon delivery of its report to the Secretaries or when its 2-year charter expires, whichever comes first, the Committee’s activities will finish, and the Departments will develop the next edition of the Dietary Guidelines, informed by the Committee’s work, existing evidence-based federal guidance, federal agency input, and public comments.
The Committee examined the evidence using three approaches: Data analysis, food pattern modeling, and systematic reviews. Each approach has its own rigorous, protocol-driven methodology and plays a unique, complementary role in examining the science. For each approach, staff from HHS and USDA supported the Committee’s review of the evidence.
This year’s update of the Guidelines has yet to generate much controversy.
According to the National Institutes of Health, the committee examined the fact that about 36 percent of people in the U.S. are lactose-intolerant.
Earlier, the potato industry was concerned about potatoes’ future in this year’s and future Dietary Guidelines for Americans. But Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra sent a letter to Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, assuring her there is no intent or effort underway to reclassify potatoes as a grain under the guidelines.
The USDA and HHS are jointly responsible for updating the guidelines.
“The Dietary Guidelines for Americans is a framework for healthy eating, not a one-size-fits-all mold everyone must fit into,” the letter said. “ The U.S. population is diverse, reflected in what and how we eat. “
While HHS and USDA acknowledge that most Americans do not follow the guidelines, the U.S. wine industry is concerned about following the World HealthOrganization’s guidelines. U.S. dietary guidelines say men can safely have two drinks daily, and women can have one. Canada’s dietary guidelines recommend no more than two drinks per week, with polls showing that 66 percent of people aged 21 to 39 said they would cut back.
The current ninth edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) is for 2020-25. For the first time, it includes dietary guidelines for children from birth to 23 months.
At the end of the last five-year exercise, HHS and USDA rejected the advice of the last expert panel, which recommended that the guidelines set new lower targets for sugar and alcoholic beverage consumption.
Earlier this year, the German Society for Nutrition (DGE) released new dietary guidelines for Germany, which focus more on plant-based foods and highlight health and sustainability.
Germany’s dietary guidelines call for a 75 percent plant-based diet and a 25 percent animal-based diet. The guidelines also recommend plant-based fats like vegetable oils over animal sources like butter.
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