Many people fighting obesity put top priority on avoiding fat. But that strategy often leads to a preference for sugar-laden “diet” foods that could be contributing to weight gain, according to a new study published online in the journal Physiology and Behavior.
UGA researchers found that rats fed a diet high in sugar, but low in fat—similar to popular diet foods—increased body fat mass when compared to rats fed a balanced rodent diet. The high-sugar diet induced a host of other problems, including liver damage and brain inflammation.
“Most so-called diet products containing low or no fat have an increased amount of sugar and are camouflaged under fancy names, giving the impression that they are healthy, but the reality is that those foods may damage the liver and lead to obesity,” said Krzysztof Czaja, associate professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine.
Notably, the rats consuming high-sugar, low-fat diets didn’t consume significantly more calories than the rats who were fed a balanced diet, Czaja said.
The problem, rather, comes in the way the sugary intake alters the metabolism.
“In rats fed a low-fat, high-sugar diet, the efficiency of generating body fat is more than twice as high,” he said. “Rats consuming low-fat, high-sugar diets need less than half the number of calories to generate the same amount of body fat.”
A common gut bacterium’s reliance on hydrogen presents a pathway to potential new treatment for gastric cancers, which kill more than 700,000 people per year, according to a study led by UGA researchers.
The study shows how the bacterium Helicobacter pylori uses hydrogen as an energy source to inject a toxin known as cytotoxin-associated gene A, or CagA, into cells, resulting in gastric cancer.
“These findings have potentially significant clinical implications. If we can alter the bacterial makeup of a person’s gut, we can put bacteria in there that don’t produce hydrogen or put in an extra dose of harmless bacteria that use hydrogen,” said Robert Maier, Georgia Research Alliance Ramsey Eminent Scholar of Microbial Physiology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. “If we can do that, there will be less hydrogen for H. pylori to use, which will essentially starve this bacteria out and result in less cancer.”
A 2002 study led by Maier showed that the presence of hydrogen in the gastric chamber was important for bacterial growth. It wasn’t until the current study, however, that researchers learned of the cancer connection: The bacterium harnesses the energy from hydrogen gas, via the enzyme hydrogenase, to disrupt host cell function and cause cancer.
“We didn’t realize that pathogens like H. pylori could have access to hydrogen inside an animal in a way that enables the bacterium to inject this toxin into a host cell and damage it,” Maier said.
The study was published by the American Society for Microbiology journal mBio.
The non-invasive test enables the evaluation of muscle health without expensive equipment and shows how exercise can help people with neurological injuries and illnesses.
Older adults suffering from multiple chronic health conditions and depression are nearly five times as likely to be problem drinkers as older adults with the same conditions and no depression.
Most of us have suffered the indignity of food poisoning at some point in our lives. Perhaps you got yours at an unfamiliar roadside diner, or maybe you happened upon a potato salad of questionable provenance at a weekend potluck. Regardless of the source, you may take some consolation in knowing that you did not suffer alone.
In the U.S., about 48 million—or roughly one in six people—fall victim to some form of foodborne illness every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The overwhelming majority of those affected will weather the gastrointestinal storm and return to work or school after a few uncomfortable days. But foodborne illness can be serious.
Among the millions of people sickened every year, 128,000 must be hospitalized and about 3,000 die. Foodborne illnesses also impose a tremendous economic burden of more than $15.5 billion in treatment costs and lost wages every year, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
These numbers are a stark reminder that while we have made great advances in food safety, there is always ample room for improvement. Few people are as aware of this as Michael Doyle. The Regents Professor of Food Microbiology and founding director of UGA’s Center for Food Safety, Doyle has spent the better part of 30 years studying the pathogens that make us sick.
“I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, so I appreciated the importance of safe food from a very young age,” Doyle said. “I’ve carried those lessons with me all the way to UGA, where my colleagues in the Center for Food Safety and I work to develop new ways of detecting and controlling the harmful microbes in food that can make people sick.”
A changing landscape
Doyle’s scientific career began in earnest at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in bacteriology, and a Master of Science and Ph.D. in food microbiology. He worked as a faculty member in UW’s Food Research Institute from 1980 to 1991, and he gained wide recognition for developing the first test to detect E. coli 0157, a bacterial food pathogen that can cause diarrhea, abdominal cramps, kidney failure and even death.
He came to UGA in 1991 to lead the newly developed Center for Food Safety, which is now home to 19 faculty. He also began working with scientists at the CDC, who came to rely on Doyle’s counsel and skill in the laboratory when faced with a new outbreak of foodborne illnesses.
Over the course of his career, Doyle has seen dramatic changes in the way food companies and regulatory agencies manage the nation’s food supply. He’s watched household brands take a beating in the news media when one of their products is connected with an outbreak, and he and his colleagues have helped create a myriad of new scientific tools to help those companies improve their operations.
“Many companies in years gone by talked a lot about food safety, but they didn’t really spend a lot of money on it,” said Doyle. “But the world has changed in the last few years, and people are becoming more serious about food safety culture.”
Doyle has forged strong working relationships in the food industry, which has allowed him to mold the Center for Food Safety into a program that develops real solutions for companies that are committed to producing safer foods.
“Today it is largely companies that are paving the way in terms of developing more advanced methods to isolate harmful microbes,” he said. “Big brands like Kraft and General Mills can’t afford to have food safety hiccups. Also, the Department of Justice prosecutes these cases more aggressively now than they have in the past, so there is a financial incentive to produce safe products.”
When dangerous pathogens do slip through the cracks, scientists may call upon a host of new genetic tools to track the outbreak. Researchers at the CDC and other agencies can isolate pathogens from tainted food, analyze their unique genetic makeup and store that information in databases.
“When a patient comes in complaining of food poisoning, they can compare the pathogen taken from that patient with the database to see if there might be links to isolates that have come from food processing facilities,” said Doyle, who is also a member of the National Academy of Medicine. “They can even go back in time and look at microbes that caused outbreaks years ago to see if there is any connection to something happening today. It’s incredible; the technology is driving the industry in new directions very quickly.”
But detection is only one part of the equation. There is a major push in the food industry not only to identify potentially harmful pathogens, but also to eliminate them or control their spread, he said.
To help solve this problem, Doyle, along with Tong Zhao, an assistant research scientist at UGA, invented a food wash that significantly reduces the risk of foodborne illnesses by killing harmful microbes before they reach the supermarket or dinner table. Known by the trade name FIT-L, the wash has been successfully tested against more than 30 different harmful microbes, including E. coli, Salmonella and Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague.
“We’ve tested a lot of different types of washes and treatments that are out there, and quite honestly, this is one of the best that we’ve come across,” said Doyle, who was the first UGA faculty member to be named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.
Safety first: Mike Doyle tests the temperature of hamburger patties with a meat thermometer. Doyle stepped down as director of the Center for Food Safety this summer after more than 25 years of leadership.
Life beyond the lab
Doyle stepped down from his position as director of the Center for Food Safety this year after 25 years at its helm. He will be replaced by Francisco Diez Gonzalez, who joined UGA after working as a faculty member and head of the Department of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Minnesota.
“I can’t even imagine walking into the door without his help,” Diez said. “Close working relationships like the ones Mike has built require a lot of trust, and they are critical for the future success of the center.”
Doyle will remain at UGA for a year to help Diez make the transition, but he’s looking forward to some well-deserved time off.
“Our immediate family has grown from five to 14 with all my grandkids and my children’s spouses, and it’s continuing to grow,” he said. “I’d like to see more of them.
“I’ll try to continue working with companies that really want to raise the bar on food safety, but the Center is in good hands with Francisco, and I’m looking forward to spending more time with family.”
Researchers in UGA’s College of Pharmacy have discovered that alternating between a high-fat and a more nutritionally balanced diet at regular intervals may help prevent or treat obesity and its associated metabolic disorders.
The stigma attached to mental illness creates a barrier for many seeking treatment, but it has a particularly negative impact on the help-seeking behaviors of black Americans, according to a recent study.
Dental surface restorations significantly contribute to prolonged mercury levels in the body, according to new research from the University of Georgia’s College of Public Health.
In football, player-vs.-player hits will likely cause more severe head impacts than other impacts, according to a new study by a University of Georgia researcher.
To explore the relationship between the percentage of fat in muscle and overall health, University of Georgia graduate student Hui-Ju Young began looking into ways to use ultrasound to measure muscle health.
A diet that includes higher amounts of polyunsaturated fats, found in foods like walnuts and salmon, can help offset the detrimental effects of the occasional meal high in saturated fats, University of Georgia researchers have shown in a small clinical study.
They found that study participants who consumed a high polyunsaturated fat diet for seven days showed better fat burning and significant decreases in total cholesterol, among other benefits, compared to a control group that consumed a standard American diet that is higher in saturated fats and lower in polyunsaturated fats.
The study, published in the European Journal of Nutrition in May, highlights the protective effects of a diet higher in polyunsaturated fats.
“If you try to eat fairly healthy most of the time and eat a diet that’s higher in these polyunsaturated fats on a regular basis, when you do occasionally splurge or have meals high in saturated fats, it’s not quite as detrimental,” said Jamie Cooper, the study’s senior author and an associate professor in the department of foods and nutrition in the UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences.
Researchers studied 26 participants, 16 of whom completed a seven-day diet high in polyunsaturated fats—in this case, through whole foods such as walnuts, wild-caught Alaskan keta salmon, tuna, flax seed oil, grapeseed oil and canola oil, along with fish oil supplements—while 10 consumed a control diet higher in saturated fats that consisted largely of frozen meals. Both groups consumed the same three-day lead-in diet.
Both seven-day diets contained identical percentages of carbohydrates, protein and fat and only differed in the types of fat consumed. The high polyunsaturated fat diet derived twice as much energy—or 21 percent—from polyunsaturated fats than the control diet—at 10 percent.
By the end of the seven-day diet, the high polyunsaturated fat diet participants showed significant decreases in total cholesterol and other markers of “bad” cholesterol such as LDL and triglycerides. These participants also were shown to demonstrate greater fat oxidation compared to the control group.
“By consuming a diet higher in polyunsaturated fat on a regular basis, you’re basically walking around with this inherent protection from the cardiometabolic effects of poor, high saturated fat meals,” said study co-author Chad Paton, an assistant professor in both the college’s foods and nutrition department and the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
Researchers cautioned that simply occasionally eating meals higher in polyunsaturated fats will not protect against overeating and regularly consuming meals high in saturated fats.
“If on your ‘splurge’ day or meal you consume 1,000 excess calories, you are going to put on some fat mass from that,” Cooper said. “Even though higher daily polyunsaturated fat consumption can help you burn more fat when eating high saturated fat meals, it can’t overcome the fat mass gain that will occur with a large caloric surplus from overeating.
“But if you’re fairly consistent in matching your energy balance, meaning your calories in are equaling your calories out, then occasionally having that high saturated fat meal shouldn’t lead to as much fat storage in your body if you’re eating more of these (high polyunsaturated fat) foods regularly.”
The study was funded by the California Walnut Commission. Additional researchers are Jada L. Stevenson from Texas Christian University and Mary K. Miller and Hannah E. Skillman from Texas Tech University.
Researchers at the University of Georgia’s College of Pharmacy have discovered that alternating between a high fat and a more nutritionally balanced diet at regular intervals may help prevent or treat obesity and its associated metabolic disorders. They published their findings recently in the journal Scientific Reports.
For their study, scientists fed mice a high fat diet for five days before switching the animals to regular feed for a period of one, two or five days. They repeated this cycle for several weeks and observed the effects.
They found that switching to a regular diet for two or five days between periods of high fat intake not only helped control body weight, it also improved insulin sensitivity and prevented the accumulation of fat in the liver, two common side effects of obesity.
“Maintaining a proper diet requires a lot of willpower, and one of the problems we see very often with modern weight loss programs is that people cannot sustain a restricted diet over long periods of time,” said Dexi Liu, the Panoz Professor of Pharmacy at UGA. “The temptation to eat becomes overwhelming, and many people end up regaining the weight they’ve lost, so we wanted to see if there may be an alternative to these diets.”
Mice were allowed to eat as much food as they wanted during every phase of the study. The researchers also maintained two control groups, one of which received only a high fat diet and another that received only regular feed.
While mice that received only a high fat diet predictably gained weight, those fed an alternating diet closely mirrored the control group that received only regular feed in terms of their body weight, liver health and glucose sensitivity.
“The mice that received an alternating diet maintained body weight similar to mice that only received a regular diet,” Liu said. “They also had much lower levels of inflammation, which can contribute to the development of metabolic disorders like diabetes.”
Liu and his co-authors Yongjie Ma and Mingming Gao also found that an alternating diet can reverse obesity in mice. To test this, they fed a group of obese mice an alternating diet for five weeks, which led to a 12 percent reduction in fat mass compared to control animals.
“These results suggest that it may be possible to eat the foods you like, and to do so with pleasure, as long as those habits are tempered with periods of rest,” Liu said.
While he cautions that their results in an animal model do not necessarily translate directly to humans, Liu and his colleagues think that an alternating diet similar to the one used in their experiments could serve as the foundation for new dietary guidelines.
“Obesity is a complex disorder, and there are many factors that can contribute to excessive weight gain,” Liu said. “There are, for example, genetic differences that may influence how easily a person gains or loses weight, but we believe that diet is still the dominant factor.
“Ultimately, we want to find ways to help make people healthy, and an alternating diet may be a more practical way for people to live a healthier life.”
The study, “Alternating Diet as a Preventive and Therapeutic Intervention for High Fat Diet-induced Metabolic Disorder,” is available at www.nature.com/articles/srep26325.
This study was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health under grant number RO1HL098295.
A new study from a group of international researchers has identified a potentially effective tool to reduce the long-term health risks of childhood obesity-aerobic exercise.
In a study published in the early online edition of the International Journal of Obesity, researchers at the University of Georgia, the Menzies Institute for Medical Research in Hobart, Australia, and the George Institute for Global Health at Oxford University found that higher aerobic fitness in childhood, independent of abdominal fat, reduced the risk of developing metabolic syndrome in early adulthood by 36 percent compared to those with lower childhood fitness levels.
Metabolic syndrome is a clustering of key cardiovascular disease risk factors and is associated with an increased risk of subsequent coronary artery disease, stroke and Type 2 diabetes.
The study used data collected as part of a 20-year follow-up of 1,792 Australians who participated in a national childhood health and fitness survey at age 7 to 15 years in 1985. Data collection included a 1-mile run to assess cardiorespiratory fitness and waist circumference measures to assess abdominal fat in childhood. As adults, participants attended one of 34 study clinics held across Australia where they underwent a range of additional health and fitness assessments.
“While a number of studies have found that higher levels of aerobic fitness can substantially reduce the cardiovascular disease risks associated with adult obesity, few studies have looked to see whether this might also be true regarding childhood obesity,” said the study’s lead author Michael Schmidt, an associate professor in the College of Education’s department of kinesiology.
While the long-term cardiovascular risks of childhood obesity were reduced among those with higher childhood fitness, children with higher levels of abdominal fat still had a three-fold increased risk of adult metabolic syndrome after adjusting for their fitness level.
However, the combination of both a high waist circumference and low cardiorespiratory fitness in childhood proved especially potent as these participants were over eight times more likely to have the metabolic syndrome in adulthood than those who had low waist circumference and high aerobic fitness levels.
The study’s results also support the importance of staying physically active beyond childhood.
“We found that participants who had low fitness levels in childhood but increased their relative fitness level by adulthood had a markedly lower prevalence of metabolic syndrome than those who remained low fit,” said study co-author Erika Rees, a doctoral student in kinesiology. “And this was especially true for those with higher levels of abdominal fat as children.”
Schmidt said that the findings come with an important caveat. “Our findings are based on the waist circumference and fitness levels among Australian children in 1985. Children in the U.S. and other developed countries today have substantially higher levels of abdominal fat and much lower levels of aerobic fitness. Therefore, fewer of today’s children may have the level of fitness needed to partially offset the negative cardiovascular disease risks of childhood obesity.”
The caffeine in a cup of coffee could help improve athletic endurance, according to a new study by Simon Higgins, a doctoral student in the College of Education.
Higgins reviewed the relatively modest scientific literature on coffee as a source of caffeine (as opposed to an abundance of research on pure caffeine), and he found that when participants in trials either cycled or ran after drinking coffee, in a majority of cases endurance was noticeably improved.
In particular, between 3 and 7 milligrams per kilogram of body weight of caffeine from coffee increased endurance performance by an average of 24 percent.
Higgins says that more research is needed before giving official recommendations to athletes, especially because the amount of caffeine in a cup of coffee can vary, depending on how it has been prepared. In any case, “athletes should run any caffeine use through their sports dietitian first, as the NCAA lists it as a banned substance.”
Middle-school age is a critical juncture in a child’s life, as kids typically decrease their activity levels by 50 percent between fifth and sixth grades. But adults who want to help them lead more active lives would do well to heed some simple advice: skip the guilt trip.
A study led by Rod Dishman, professor of kinesiology at the College of Education, found that adults who try to guilt middle- schoolers into exercising may do more harm than good.
The study found that kids who felt they could make their own decisions about physical activity were more likely to regard themselves as someone who exercises, which made them more likely to do so.
Given their results, Dishman and colleagues at the University of South Carolina are now exploring ways to help kids identify with exercise at a younger age; that way they are more likely to be physically active by the time they reach middle school. This might mean teaching more structured games in elementary school, integrating physical activities into classroom lessons or expanding community recreational leagues to give kids more chances to improve in a particular sport.
Regardless of approach, there is one common message: “The best thing is to do it because it’s fun,” he said.
“Just like there are kids who are drawn to music or art, there are kids who are drawn to physical activity,” Dishman said. That group does not need adults’ intervention. “But what you want is to motivate those kids who otherwise might not be drawn to an activity.”
Prompted by a growing number of foodborne illness outbreaks linked to dry foods such as crackers and cookies, food scientists at UGA’s Center for Food Safety conducted a study to see just how well salmonella could survive in some of the popular snack foods.
The researchers used five different serotypes of salmonella that had been isolated from foods involved in previous outbreaks. They put these bacteria into four kinds of fillings found in cookies or crackers and then placed them in storage.
Not only did the salmonella survive; they thrived. In some cases, the pathogens were able to live longer than six months.
It’s a surprising finding, because experts generally don’t expect salmonella to grow in foods that have a very dry environment, said study leader Larry Beuchat, a food microbiologist and a Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus.
But the demonstrated ability of pathogens to survive in some remarkable settings has researchers considering new ways of preventing contamination and the outbreaks they may cause.
“The next steps would be to test all ingredients that are used in these foods,” Beuchat said. If the foodborne pathogens are largely confined to specific ingredients, then food producers may have to stop using them.
Low bodily levels of vitamin D may limit the effectiveness of HIV treatment in adults, according to a recent UGA study.
Those carrying the human immunodeficiency virus—commonly known as HIV—often struggle with declining health because their immune systems can’t effectively respond to common pathogens.
But “the magic of antiretroviral therapy lies in its ability to restore immune function,” said study coauthor Amara Ezeamama, assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the College of Public Health. “With antiretroviral drugs, people with HIV are beginning to live longer lives.”
Still, it has been suspected that certain deficiencies, such as of vitamin D, compromise the functioning of these drugs. Thus “our goal in the study,” said Ezeamama, “was to understand whether vitamin D deficiency limits the amount of immune recovery benefit for persons on HIV treatment.”
She and her colleagues conducted an 18-month trial of 398 HIV-positive adults on “highly active antiretroviral therapy,” or HAART, a “cocktail” of three or more drugs that is currently the most common—and most effective—treatment for these patients. Those on HAART take it daily.
In their study, the researchers measured participants’ immune function at 0, 3, 6, 12, and 18 months, and related it to whether or not they had adequate levels of vitamin D.
A major result was that vitamin D indeed helped the adults’ complement of CD4+T cells recover more quickly from the effects of HIV. CD4+T cells, a type of T cell that helps the immune system fight off pathogens, were critical because of the patients’ weakened immune systems.
In the study, participants with sufficient levels of vitamin D recovered more of their immune function—on average, 65 CD4+T cells more—than those with vitamin D deficiency.
The benefit of vitamin D sufficiency seemed even greater for younger and underweight HIV-positive adults.
“HIV destroys the capacity of the body to mount effective response to pathogens,” Ezeamama said. “Given different vitamin D levels, HIV-positive adults recovered at different rates. We found a relationship between vitamin D and CD4+T cells.
“If we intervene with vitamin D, which is relatively cheap, it could give HIV-infected individuals a modest immune recovery bump that will likely translate into a big public health impact.”
In future studies, she wants to investigate how vitamin D affects immune recovery and long-term health outcomes in HIV-positive children.
“We are now in an era of hope for persons with HIV,” Ezeamama said. “We know that HIV treatment works, and now people can live for several decades with HIV. We can further delay the progress of the disease and maintain survivors on a higher quality of life if we understand the factors that limit the effectiveness of HIV treatment.”
One of the most important ingredients for a successful marriage might just be a healthy dose of gratitude, according to a recent paper published by researchers at the College of Family and Consumer Sciences.
“We found that feeling appreciated and believing that your spouse values you directly influences how you feel about your marriage, how committed you are to it and your belief that it will last,” said study coauthor Ted Futris, associate professor of human development and family science.
Through a telephone survey, the study asked 468 married individuals about their financial well-being, communication habits and expressions of spousal gratitude.
The results indicated that gratitude—measured in terms of the degree to which individuals felt appreciated by their spouse, valued by their spouse and acknowledged when they did something nice for their spouse—was the most consistent predictor of marital quality.
“It goes to show the power of ‘thank you,’” said Allen Barton, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral research associate at UGA’s Center for Family Research. “Even if a couple is experiencing distress and difficulty in other areas, gratitude in the relationship can help promote positive marital outcomes.
“This is the first study to document the protective effect that feeling appreciated by your spouse can have for marriages,” Barton said. “We think it is quite important, as it highlights a practical way couples can help strengthen their marriage, particularly if they are not the most adept communicators in conflict.”
Results from this study also confirmed previous findings by documenting that “demand/withdraw communication” injects financial distress that negatively influences a marriage.
“Demand/withdraw communication occurs when one partner tends to demand, nag or criticize, while the other responds by withdrawing or avoiding the confrontation,” Barton said. “Although wife-demand/husband-withdraw interactions appear more commonly in couples, in the current study we found that financial distress worsened marital outcomes by increasing both partners’ instances of demands and withdrawals.”
“When couples are stressed about making ends meet, they are more likely to engage in negative behaviors—they are more critical of each other and defensive, and they can even withdraw from each other—which can then lead to lower marital quality,” Futris said.
Gratitude, however, can interrupt this cycle and help couples overcome negative communication in their relationship due to patterns resulting from current stressors.
“All couples have disagreements and argue,” Futris said. “And when couples are stressed, they are likely to have more arguments. What distinguishes the marriages that last from those that don’t is not how often they argue but how they argue and how they treat each other on a daily basis.”
Ted Futris is an associate professor in UGA’s College of Family and Consumer Sciences.
Just days before the kickoff of Super Bowl 50, University of Georgia researchers are announcing a study addressing ways to reduce the stigma surrounding concussions, an injury so commonly associated with football.
While early reaction to the new dietary guidelines released by the federal government on Thursday focused on new warnings about added sugar, sodium and meat, a University of Georgia expert noted the report is largely consistent with previous versions.
The 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommended consumption of less than 10 percent of calories a day from added sugars—the number is currently at more than 13 percent—and from saturated fats, which would require cutting back on meat, cheese and butter, for example.
The guidelines also removed the daily limit for dietary cholesterol (300 milligrams) included in the most recent guidelines published in 2010.
Also, average sodium intake, according to the guidelines, is 3,440 mg per day and should be reduced to less than 2,300 mg a day for adults and children ages 14 and older, and to 1,500 mg per day for individuals with high blood pressure.
“These changes are not at odds with previous versions of the guidelines,” noted Ali Berg, a UGA Cooperative Extension nutrition and health specialist and faculty member in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences. “The sugar recommendation is based on how best to help consumers eat a diet that meets nutritional needs and is within calorie limits to promote a healthy body weight and reduce the risk for chronic disease. This is an effort to help Americans eat better and not too much sugar and is no different from previous editions of the guidelines. They’ve just quantified it this time.”
The guidelines have been published every five years since 1980 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and are used in the development of federal food, nutrition and health policies and programs.
The guidelines “embody the idea that a healthy eating pattern is not a rigid prescription, but rather an adaptable framework” toward accomplishing a healthy lifestyle, according to the report’s executive summary.
Berg agreed, noting research continues to support a healthy diet includes a variety of foods such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat and fat-free dairy and lean protein.
Also, saturated fats, trans fats and sodium “are not so good for us,” Berg said, pointing out the new guidelines affirm this long-held view of many experts.
“The most recent release of the dietary guidelines reflects continued commitment to provide recommendations that will help Americans consume a diet that is health-promoting and backed by good, quality science,” Berg said.
The report also recommended Americans meet the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, referencing a 2008 science-based report published by the HHS to help Americans 6 and older maintain and improve health through regular physical activity.
The guidelines note “it is clear … that the vast majority of people in the United States are not meeting these recommendations,” adding that in general Americans consume too many calories and don’t get adequate physical activity.
Berg praised the report’s recommendation that “collective action” is needed to affect food and exercise choices and to help prevent chronic disease.
“The new guidelines bring attention to the fact that healthy living doesn’t occur in a vacuum,” Berg said. “It’s going to take the efforts of individuals, communities, organizations, industry and policymakers to make healthy living the ‘easy, accessible, affordable and normative’ choice. These recommendations will drive the efforts of policymakers, health professionals, health educators and industry to support individuals in implementing the guidelines.”
