January 7, 2016
By Anahad O'Connor
New federal dietary guidelines (click here) announced on Thursday urge Americans to drastically cut back
on sugar, and for the first time have singled out teenage boys and men
for eating too much meat.
Despite those
warnings, the guidelines were also notable for what they did not say.
While draft recommendations had suggested all Americans adopt more
environmentally-sustainable eating habits by cutting back on meat, that
advice was dropped from the final guidelines. And longstanding limits on
dietary cholesterol were also removed, a victory for the nation’s egg
producers, which have long argued that cholesterol from eggs and seafood
is not a major health concern.
The dietary
guidelines, issued by the Agriculture and Health and Human Services
Departments, are updated every five years and were first issued in 1980.
Typically, they have encouraged Americans to consume fruits and
vegetables, whole grains, lean meat, and low-fat foods, while
restricting intake of saturated fat and dietary cholesterol. Though many
individual consumers may not give the guidelines much thought, the
recommendations have the potential to influence the diets of millions of
Americans. The guidelines affect the foods chosen for the school lunch
program, which feeds more than 30 million children each school day, and
help shape national food assistance programs like the Special
Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, which
has eight million beneficiaries....
