If you are interested in nutrition a proposal for U.S. dietary guidelines has been released. If the gigantic report is too much for you to digest 🙂 you can search for topics you are interested in, or you can read the Executive Summary.
For example, you can click here to see the results of a search for “salt”.
In this post I am going to pull out some of the proposed recommendations from the executive summary. I urge you to read the entire executive summary as there is lot of useful information that can help you to improve your own diet.
Important: Before making any changes to your diet you should always consult your physician.
Here are some highlights from the Executive Summary:
There are several reasons why dietary guidelines are helpful.
Two thirds of Americans are overweight.
Half of Americans have preventable chronic diseases.
Can you imagine how much misery would be avoided and money saved if we could reduce these medical problems?
The causes of much preventable disease and being overweight are fairly obvious:
- Physical inactivity or sedentary behavior – sitting in front of the television, computer or video games
- Poor diet – eating processed junk food filled with sugar and saturated fats
- Eating too many calories – eating gigantic fast food concoctions filled with sugar and saturated fats, snacking on junk food, drinking giant cups of soda
The committee found that Americans don’t get enough of many important vitamins and minerals. Why is this? We eat too many processed foods and not enough fruits, vegetables, whole grains and dairy.
Here are some of the nutrients that Americans under consume (we don’t eat enough foods containing these):
- vitamin A
- vitamin D
- vitamin E
- vitamin C
- folate
- calcium
- magnesium
- fiber
- potassium.
- For adolescent and premenopausal females, iron also is a lacking.
What is the best way to get these nutrients?
- Eat fresh vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and appropriate amounts of dairy, protein.
- Don’t eat lots of fast food and processed food.
- Don’t eat foods with a lot of sodium and saturated fat.
You can improve your health dramatically by making wise choices about the food that you eat.
Eat more:
- vegetables
- fruits
- whole grains
- low- or non-fat dairy
- seafood
- legumes, and nuts
- moderate amount of alcohol (adults only but don’t start drinking alcohol if you did not before)
Eat less:
- red and processed meat
- sugar-sweetened foods and drinks
- refined grain
A diet higher in plant-based foods has been found to be healthier for humans and the environment as compared to animal-based foods.
Vegetarian and Mediterranean and Heart healthy diets have all been found to beneficial to health.
A moderate amount of seafood in the diet has health benefits.
Moderate consumption of coffee can have benefits for some, e.g. reduced risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease in adults.
Moderate consumption of red wine by adults can have benefits for some.
High caffeine beverages may have adverse effects on health.
Eat a diet low in saturated fat, added sugars, and sodium
When you reduce a unhealthy nutrient in your diet replace it with a healthy nutrient. Here are some examples:
Replace saturated fat such as red meat with unsaturated fat, e.g. olive oil, sardines, walnuts, particularly polyunsaturated fatty acids.
Reduce sugars with healthy options, such as water in place of sugar-sweetened beverages.
Reduce sodium, by eating low sodium foods and learning how to flavor unsalted foods with spices and herbs.
I’ve selected some of the recommendations from the report as examples but remember there is much useful information in the entire proposal. Also, remember that this is NOT a final document.
Before making any changes to your diet you should always consult your physician.
