Dietary Guidelines Health Article

Dietary Guidelines

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans are the foundation of national nutrition policy for the United States. They are designed to help Americans make food choices that promote health and reduce the risk of disease. The guidelines are published jointly by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The first set of guidelines was published as Nutrition and Your Health: Dietary Guidelines for Americans in 1980. Since then, an advisory committee has been appointed every five years to review and revise the guidelines based on the latest research in nutrition and health.

Early Dietary Advice in the United States

The first half of the twentieth century was a period of enormous growth in nutrition knowledge. The primary goal of nutrition advice at this time was to help people select foods to meet their energy (calorie) needs and prevent nutritional deficiencies. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, food was rationed and people had little money to buy food. They needed to know how to select an adequate diet with few resources, and the USDA produced a set of meal plans that were affordable for families of various incomes. To this day, a food guide for low-income families—the Thrifty Food Plan—is issued regularly by the USDA and used to determine food stamp allotments. In addition to meal plans, the USDA developed food guides—tools to help people select healthful diets. Over the years the food guides changed, based on the current information available.

Food Guides versus Dietary Guidelines

Food guides are practical tools that people can use to select a healthful diet. Food guide recommendations, such as how many servings of grains to eat, are based on dietary guidelines that are overall recommendations for healthful diets. For example, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans include the recommendation that Americans "choose a variety of grains daily, especially whole grains." To help people reach this goal, the USDA's Food Guide Pyramid is built on a base of grain foods and recommends six to eleven servings daily with several servings from whole grains. Thus, the Food Guide Pyramid supports the recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines.