JONEL ALECCIA
Associated Press
Americans should eat more beans, peas and lentils and cut back on red and processed meats and starchy vegetables, while limiting added sugars, sodium and saturated fat.
That's the advice released by an expert panel of nutritionists charged with counseling the U.S. government about the 2025 edition of the dietary guidelines that will form the cornerstone of federal food programs and policy.
The 20-member panel didn't weigh in on the growing role of ultraprocessed foods linked to health problems and steered clear of updating controversial guidance on alcohol.
Overall, the recommendations for the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans sound familiar, said Marion Nestle, a food policy expert.
"This looks like every other set of dietary guidelines since 1980: eat your veggies and reduce consumption of foods high in salt, sugar and saturated fat," Nestle said in an email. "This particular statement says nothing about balancing calories, when overconsumption of calories, especially from ultra-processed foods, is the biggest challenge to the health of Americans."
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The nutrition panel concluded a healthy diet for people age 2 or older is higher in vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, whole grains, fish and vegetable oils that are higher in unsaturated fat.
It is lower in red and processed meats, sugar-sweetened foods and beverages, refined grains and saturated fat. It may also include fat-free or low-fat dairy and foods lower in sodium and may include plantbased foods.
The panel, which met for nearly two years, was the first to focus on the dietary needs of Americans through what they called a "health equity lens," said Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity expert at Massachusetts General Hospital who was part of the group. That meant con sidering factors such as household income, race, ethnicity and culture when recommending healthy diets. It will help ensure the guidance "refl ects and includes various population groups," she said in an email.
Ultraprocessed foods, alcohol
Ultraprocessed foods include the snacks, sugary cereals and frozen meals that make up about 60% of the American diet.
The panel considered more than 40 studies, including several that showed links between ultraprocessed foods and becoming overweight or developing obesity. However, the nutrition experts had concerns with the quality of the research, leaving them to conclude that the evidence was too limited to make recommendations.
That decision is likely to bump up against the views of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nominee to lead the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, who ques tioned potential confl icts of interest among members of the dietary guide-lines panel and vowed to crack down on ultraprocessed foods that contribute to chronic disease.
The panel also didn't revise recommendations that suggest limiting alcohol intake to two drinks or less a day for men and one drink or less a day for women.
In 2020, the last time the guidance was updated, the government rejected the advice of scientific advisers to recommend less alcohol consumption.
Two groups -- the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine and a committee of the government agency that oversees substance abuse -- are expected to release reports in the coming months on the eff ects of moderate alcohol use to inform the guidelines.
Do Americans follow dietary guidelines?
The advisory panel acknowledged that the diets of most Americans don't meet the current guidelines. More than half of all U.S. adults have one diet-related chronic health condition or more, and 18 million U.S. households have insecure sources of food, according to the report.
"Nutrition-related chronic health conditions and their precursors continue to threaten health through the lifespan," the report concludes. "Which does not bode well for the future of health in the United States."
What's next?
The scientific report informs the dietary guidelines, which are updated every five years. Tuesday's recommendations now go to HHS and the Agriculture Department, where officials will draft the final guidance set for release next year.
The public can submit comments on the guidance at dietaryguidelines.gov under the "Work Under Way" menu option.
HHS and USDA officials will hold a public meeting Jan. 16 to discuss the recommendations. The new guidance, which will be finalized by the incoming Trump administration, is consistent with decades of federal eff orts to reduce diet-related disease in the U.S., said Dr. Peter Lurie, president of the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest.
"Broadly, I think these are well-formulated recommendations that the incoming admin-istration would do well to adopt," Lurie said.
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