The 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans were released on January 7 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The main key messages that the newly released guidelines point out for healthy eating patterns are:
- Follow a healthy eating pattern
- Focus on variety, nutrient density, and amount.
- Limit calories from added sugars and saturated fat, and reduce sodium intake.
- Shift to healthier food and beverage choices.
- Support healthy eating patterns for all.
What are the Dietary Guidelines?
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans make recommendations based on current scientific and medical evidence every 5 years. The purpose of the guidelines is to help Americans have a healthy lifestyle and most importantly prevent disease.
The guidelines are used to direct nutrition policy such as with the National School Lunch Program, the WIC program, recommendations that health professionals make and other nutrition assistance programs.
What is important in the new dietary guidelines?
Vegetables
Everyone should try to eat more vegetables every day! This means making your plate colorful with all types of vegetables to eat a variety of colorful vegetables. Eat a variety of dark green, red and orange, legumes (beans and peas), starchy, and other vegetables. Vegetables provide our bodies with Fiber and tons of nutrients every day!
Fruit
Everyone should try to eat more fruit every day! You should try to eat whole fruit most of the time and make sure that you are eating a variety of fruit — all different colors, flavors and textures of fruit. Fruit provides us with Vitamin C, Fiber and lots of other nutrients!
*Whole fruit includes fresh, frozen, canned and dried varieties of fruit.
Whole Grains
Everybody should try eating whole grain bread, pasta and brown rice in place of refined grains like white bread. Whole grains provide fiber, B-vitamins and many other important nutrients!
Dairy
Almost all Americans should try to consume more dairy every day! Strive to get 3 servings of dairy each and every day. Dairy is packed with 9 essential nutrients that our bodies use every single day!
Protein Foods
Everyone should try to eat a variety of protein foods including lean meat and poultry, eggs, legumes, nuts seeds and seafood. Most people need to consume more seafood. These foods not only provide protein, but are packed with other important nutrients.
Other recommendations:
• Cook or prepare food with oils instead of solid fats.
• Limit added sugars to less than 10 % of your total daily calories. For someone that is consuming 1,200 to 2,000 calories per day, this means that no more than 120 to 200 calories should be coming from added sugars. This is about 7 to 12 teaspoons of sugar. Remember that a teaspoon is about 4 grams of sugar, and a gram of sugar is about 4 calories.
• Limit saturated fat to less than 10 percent of your total daily calories. This didn’t change from the 2010 Dietary Guidelines. This recommendation is easily met if you stick to choosing lean protein foods and using oil instead of solid fats to prepare food with.
• Reduce sodium consumption to 2300 milligrams per day. The majority of Americans consume very high amounts of sodium, almost 49 percent more than the recommended amount of sodium! The majority of people get too much sodium from eating processed foods and from convenience foods. If you cook or prepare food at home, you have a better chance of sticking to the recommendation because you can control how much sodium goes into your meal.
• Exercise Regularly! Regular physical activity is essential to good health. Exercise and healthy eating work together as the best way to keep you in good health. Everyone should strive to get at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic activity each week and do muscle strength training twice per week.
Nutrients that we don’t get enough of:
- Calcium
- Vitamin D
- Potassium
- Dietary Fiber
Dairy provides an excellent source of Calcium and Vitamin D, and provides a good source of potassium. So, make sure to get your three servings of Dairy everyday!
Women should also try to get more Iron and pregnant women should try to get more iron and folate.
