Essay on Latest Dietary Guidelines
What do the latest dietary guidelines mean to you and your food choices?
The federal government rarely urges citizens to “enjoy” anything, especially when it comes to dietary and health recommendations. So it’s no wonder that the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, issued at the end of January 2011, made news in part for this core advice: “Enjoy your food, but eat less. “
The “eat less” guidance, of course, takes aim at the obesity epidemic that’s seen two-thirds of American adults and one-third of children exceed a healthy weight. The science behind the Guidelines came from the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC), which included Tufts’ Miriam E. Nelson, PhD, director of the John Hancock Research Center on Physical Activity, Nutrition and Obesity Prevention. In its evidence-based report, the DGAC issued what Nelson refers to as a “call to action”:
