The 835-page report lays the scientific foundation for five years of federal nutritional advice. This is what you need to know.
The Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a consistent nutrition report Wednesday that will form the basis of the next five years of federal dietary guidance. Written by an advisory committee of 20 health experts, the report is a review of the latest nutrition and food research, which the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will use to develop the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Updated every five years, the guidelines help determine federal nutrition policies and healthy eating recommendations for the nation.
The last few weeks prior to the publication of the report were not without controversy. In June, several organizations representing health care specialists asked the USDA to extend the committee’s deadline to October this year. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the nation’s largest association of nutrition professionals, cited the current Covid-19 pandemic and the government shutdown that ended in January 2019 amid interruptions in the work of the advisory committee. The Nutrition Coalition, a group of nutrition and policy experts, also argued for an extension to allow the committee to consider a broader range of studies and research. In numerous cases throughout the report, its authors note that “time constraints” forced them to take shortcuts in their analysis, or to avoid reviewing some evidence entirely.
All in all, the report makes some notable suggestions for the next iteration of the Dietary Guidelines, while maintaining a central emphasis on a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean meat. We break down some of the report’s most notable conclusions below. USDA and HHS will publish the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans later this year.
1. Men should cut down on alcohol
Previous versions of the Dietary Guidelines have recommended that men limit themselves to two drinks per day, defined as a 12-ounce bottle of beer, a five-ounce glass of wine, or a 1.5-ounce shot of liquor. For women, one drink per day is recommended. The new report reduces the recommendation for men of one drink per day and maintains the same recommendation for women. More subtly, the report clarifies that people should not drink in hopes of improving their health, The New York Times reports, which means that total abstinence is generally better than moderate consumption. Previous versions of the guidelines, including one as recent as 2010, suggested that moderate alcohol consumption may help with cognitive function in old age.
2. Three meals are better than two, but sometimes snacks are meals and meals are snacks.
Thinking of adopting intermittent fasting or trying a five-meal-a-day diet? There is still no scientific consensus to support those habits, although the report acknowledges that more research is needed. Overall, however, eating three meals a day was associated with better diet quality than two, and late-night meals and snacks tended to include more unhealthy foods. What is also unclear is what constitutes a meal and what constitutes a snack. Although Americans now self-report an average of more than five meals or snacks per day, “consensus on clear definitions or distinctions between a meal and a snack remains difficult.”
3. We are all eating too much sugar, but it is very bad among children.
The 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines urged Americans to limit their consumption of added sugars to 10 percent or less of their total caloric intake. Looking ahead, the advisory committee is now urging Americans to further reduce their consumption of additional sugar, to just 6 percent. That would require us to halve the amount of added sweeteners we currently consume: The advisory committee found that added sugars account for an average of 13 percent of our daily energy intake, largely from sugar in beverages, desserts, snacks , sweets and cereals: foods that the authors say we could all reduce.
It is troubling that the demographic group that excessively consumes sugar at the highest rate are children between the ages of 4 and 18, up to 79 percent of whom exceed the added sugar limit. The authors point out that one of the main culprits for this is sweetened beverages, such as fruit juices and soft drinks, which can increase nearly a third of your additional sugar intake. Maybe this is where mandatory added sugar labeling, which went into effect this year, can help us cut back.
4. Babies should eat peanuts, eggs, and other common allergens.
According to the new Dietary Guidelines, feeding peanuts, eggs and other foods that can cause sensitivities to babies in the first year of life could reduce the risk of allergies in adulthood. Similarly, feeding children a wide variety of “adult foods” before age two can positively influence their tastes and habits later in life. Also, babies should not have added sugar in the first 24 months of life.
5. Sustainability is not yet on the table
The authors of the report urged USDA and HHS to consider system-wide issues such as environmental sustainability in the development of the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines, but made no concrete recommendations on how they should be. This comes in response to numerous public comments asking the committee to assess the social and ecological consequences of dietary recommendations. In March, the Union of Concerned Scientists, a science advocacy group, called for reducing our consumption of meat and dairy, as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and water use. The advisory committee also admitted in its report that healthy eating depends on the production of environmentally resilient food. However, this note is likely to be ignored in the final version of the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines. After all, the advisory committee in 2015 made similar suggestions, and they were ultimately ignored.
