Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010

I am breaking this into a few different posts because my Mom says that people get tired when the blog is too long :)  I will tell more about the guidelines in a day or two from now.

This information from the Dietary Guidelines for Americans Committee Report 2010, is not all inclusive.  I have reviewed the summary and main conclusions but focus here on ones that are most important to me as a researcher and health promoter and/or ones that I have mentioned in my blog (nee wellness weekly) over the last ten years.  Thus with only a few exceptions, I do not focus on children and I do not highlight conclusions regarding sub populations when the conclusions are different from the general public, i.e. pregnant women, infants and persons who have some frailty or nutritional limitations due to severe disease states. 

The DGA state that the majority of persons would need “total energy intakes range from 2000 to 3000 calories per day for men and 1600 to 2400 calories per day for women, depending on age and physical activity level.”  As you can see the range for women is wide and the upper end is based on baseline metabolic processes, body weight and the amount of physical activity.  The data presented in this report shows the average intake of Americans across all age groups.  From the age of 9 to 70, everyone is consuming more than 2000 a day on average (I would blame this on the highly caloric food options that we have and the fact that our food labels give daily values based on a 2000 calorie diet).

This report also provides the most current overweight and obesity numbers for our country.  When combining the two, 72% of women and 64% of men fall into this category. We determine overweight and obesity by BMI status.  For adults we have number categories and for children a percentile ranking.  For toddlers and infants we do not use BMI, but almost 10% of them are considered overweight.  It looks like about 12% of children aged 2-19 are obese, nearly 17% are overweight and 32% are at risk for overweight based on percentile rankings.  I am always stunned when I see these numbers and when we break this down ethnically or by SES - the numbers are higher for poorer persons and non-white persons - across ages.

I want to highlight some implications that are found in Part D Section 1.  This part of the report regards Energy Balance and Weight Management.  This, along with informed eating and access to healthy foods is why I do what I do.  The bulleted information below comes directly from the committee report.  It is available online and the reference is provided.  As the point of the recommendations is to promote the guidelines to all Americans, I feel confident they do not mind my sharing.  The last bullet involves physical activity.  As you know, my constant pronouncement is that caloric intake has the greatest impact on weight, while sedentary activity is related to all cause mortality and metabolic processes, and physical activity to overall health, wellbeing (absence of disease), and fitness.  As much as a fountain of youth physical activity is, it only contributes a small percentage to overall total energy expenditure.  I was very pleased to see that the DGAC gave this issue full attention.

For tonight I share this and in a day or two, I will share the important points I have gleaned from the full report:

·       Adults are encouraged to self-monitor body weight, food intake, and physical activity to improve outcomes when actively losing weight or maintaining body weight following weight loss. There is also evidence that self-monitoring of body weight and physical activity also improves outcomes when actively losing weight or maintaining body weight following weight loss (Butryn, 2007; Wing, 2006). In order to facilitate better self-monitoring of food intake, there needs to be increased availability of nutrition information at the point of purchase.

·       Children and adults are encouraged to follow a frequency of eating that provides nutrient-dense foods within daily caloric requirements periodically through the day. Caution must be taken such that the frequency of eating does not lead to excess calorie intake but does meet nutrient needs. 

 ·       Strong and consistent evidence indicates that dietary patterns that are relatively low in energy density improve weight loss and weight maintenance among adults. Consistent but limited evidence suggests that lower energy density diets may be associated with lower risk of T2D among adults.  (I have pasted this statement here because low energy density cooking is my signature and I make a point to purchase, prepare and consume low energy dense foods.  Recall the blog post where I equated calorie per gram to the price per unit shelf tags at the grocery store.  I am delighted to see that the DGAC is promoting low density food choices specifically. I was equally pleased to see some of the research that I have reviewed as part of the evidence in this summary, including the work of Barbara Rolls.  Here is a post about energy density) 

·       Strong, consistent evidence indicates that physically active people are at reduced risk of becoming overweight or obese. Furthermore, there is strong evidence that physically active adults who are overweight or obese experience a variety of health benefits that are generally similar to those observed in people of ideal body weight. Because of the health benefits of physical activity that are independent of body weight classification, people of all body weight classifications gain health and fitness benefits by being habitually physically active. In addition, strong and consistent evidence based on a wide range of well-conducted studies indicates that physically active people have higher levels of health-related fitness, lower risk of developing most chronic disabling medical conditions, and lower rates of various chronic diseases than do people who are inactive. (In reporting the research the DGAC focuses mostly on what the Physical Activity Guidelines say and a few important points are made.  The first is that to get weight off a substantial amount of physical activity is needed and that when looking at weight loss, the physical activity “expenditure of calories” is a very small fraction of the overall deficit - meaning that more is cut from the calories than from the extra burn.  Physical Activity is strongly recommended for health - and those who maintain a healthy weight moderate their  calories and exercise daily - as noted in the first bullet. However, the text in this section does not talk about physical activity as a strategy for weight loss - as you can see.)

DGAC (Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee). 2010. Report of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Department of Agriculture.