Finding What’s New in the 2015–2020 Edition
In general, the changes in the Guidelines over the years can be tracked in subtle shifts in emphasis. For example, from 1980 to 1995, the Guidelines offered the simple admonition to “Eat a variety of foods.” Then in 2000, that was expanded to suggest using the Food Guide Pyramid (see Chapter 17) to make nutritious choices including a variety of grains, fruits, and vegetables. In 2010, the My Plate diagram arrived to push the Pyramid off the table, a move some consumers still regret.
The 2015–2020 edition continues this tradition with its rather plain vanilla recommendations:
- Follow a healthy eating pattern across the lifespan. Eating patterns are the overall combination of foods and drinks that a person eats over time.
- Focus on variety, nutrient-dense foods, and amount.
- Limit calories from added sugars and saturated fats, and reduce sodium intake.
- Shift to healthier food and beverage choices.
- Support healthy eating patterns for all.
Approaching the specifics, the Guidelines say that: “Healthy eating patterns include a variety of nutritious foods like vegetables, fruits, grains, low-fat and fat-free dairy, lean meats and other protein foods and oils, while limiting saturated fats, trans fats, added sugars, and sodium. A healthy eating pattern is adaptable to a person’s taste preferences, traditions, culture, and budget.”
Well, you bet “nutritious foods” are a good bet. But not just any old nutritious foods. The authors of the Guidelines have some specifics firmly in mind:
- Dark green, red, and orange legumes (beans and peas), starchy, and other vegetables
- Whole fruits
- Grains, at least half of which are whole grains
- Fat-free or low-fat dairy, including milk, yogurt, cheese, and/or fortified soy beverages
After that, the 2015–2020 Guidelines take a short running jump into new territory. This edition
- Is the first edition to recommend a limit on how much added sugar you should consume each day
- Eliminates a specific daily limit on fat and cholesterol consumption
- Adds whole eggs to the list of high-quality protein foods (but recommends less protein each day for boys and adult men)
- Says coffee, yes, regular caffeinated coffee, is a permissible pleasure
For more specific info on these new recommendations, read on through the following sections.
Take this with fewer grains of salt
In 1980, the Guidelines advised consumers to “Avoid too much sodium.” By 2000, that had become “Choose and prepare foods with less salt.” The 2015–2020 recommendations are the same as those from 2010.
Most Americans consume about 3,400 milligrams (1.5 teaspoons) of sodium a day. The Guidelines say, “Enough already,” and advise everyone to cut that to 2,300 milligrams a day, or about 1 teaspoon of table salt. If you’re older than 51 or are African American or have hypertension (high blood pressure), diabetes, or chronic kidney disease, the recommendation is even more stringent. People in this group, which includes about half of all Americans, should take in no more than 1,500 milligrams of sodium per day, or about ⅔ teaspoon of table salt.
These recommendations have stirred some serious discussion because most people have no problems with sodium. They eat a lot one day, a little less the next, and their bodies adjust.
Others, however, don’t react so evenly. For them, a high-sodium diet appears to increase the risk of high blood pressure. When you already have high blood pressure, you can tell fairly quickly whether lowering the amount of salt in your diet lowers your blood pressure. But no test is available to predict whether someone who doesn’t have high blood pressure will develop it by consuming a diet that’s high in sodium. That begs the question: Should medical advice that works for some people be applied to all people?
Don’t reduce salt intake drastically without first checking with your doctor. Remember, sodium is an essential nutrient. That’s why the Guidelines advocate moderate use, not no use at all.
Factor in the fats
The new rule on dietary fat and cholesterol — no rules — is a truly revolutionary dietary revelation.
As all good foodies know, until now, the Guidelines have laid out precise numbers on how much fat and cholesterol a healthy diet would allow, such as “no more than 10 percent of a day’s calories from saturated fats” and “less than 300 milligrams cholesterol a day.”
No more. The 2015–2020 Guidelines simply say to be smart but not obsessive: Just avoid the saturated fats and keep cholesterol consumption low.
This change in factoring fats was driven by the fact that when told to cut back on fats, most people just cut back on fats — good, bad and in-between. But some fats, such as those found in certain plant foods like avocados and nuts (check out Chapter 28 for more on these superstar foods), are good for you.
Word to the fat-wise #1: You can reduce your intake of solid fats in food, and thus your intake of saturated fats, simply by wielding a sharp knife to cut away as much visible fat as possible from meat and poultry as well as stripping off the fat-laden poultry skin.
Word to the fat-wise #2: Liquid fats, otherwise known as oils, are mixtures of saturated fats and unsaturated fats. See Chapter 7 to find out which oils are high in saturated fatty acids and which are not.
Subtract the added sugar
Another first for the new Guidelines is the recommendation to hold your consumption of added sugars to less than 10 percent of your daily calories. Notice the word added because this means editing your diet to reduce foods to which sugar is added, such as cakes and cookies — or coffee with three spoons of sugar — not to avoid foods with naturally occurring sugars such as fruits. The new Guidelines bless moderate coffee consumption because coffee is sugar-free, so don’t mess with a good thing.
Get adequate essential nutrients
For various reasons, even an adequate diet may be deficient in specific nutrients. One example is the fact that as we age, our bodies may be less able to absorb vitamin B12 from food, meaning that supplements are sensible.
As always, this edition of the Guidelines stresses the need to obtain adequate amounts of important nutrients.
For the recommended amounts of each nutrient, as well as a more detailed explanation of their benefits, check out Chapter 8 (dietary fiber), Chapter 10 (vitamins), and Chapter 11 (minerals).
Go fish for good food
Finding a balance in what fish to eat and how much can be challenging. On the one hand, fish provides undeniably beneficial omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA, whose benefits are listed in Chapter 7. On the other hand, some fish is contaminated with methylmercury, a toxic metal that can wreak neurological and cardiovascular havoc, particularly in the fetus and in children.
Taking this into account, the Guidelines recommend that most healthy people consume about 8 ounces of fish and seafood a week to get the 250 milligrams per day of EPA and DHA associated with a lower risk of death from heart disease among otherwise healthy people and an improved outcome for newborns.
The fish of choice include salmon, anchovies, herring, shad, sardines, Pacific oysters, trout, and Atlantic and Pacific mackerel. Children and women who are of child-bearing age, pregnant, or nursing should avoid all King mackerel, shark, swordfish, and tile fish, species widely acknowledged to be highly contaminated. And these two groups should eat no more than 12 ounces of fish a week, including no more than 6 ounces of canned albacore tuna. (See Chapter 24 for a list of fish and their mercury levels.)
Bring on the veggies
In 1980, the first Guidelines directed consumers to “Eat foods with adequate starch and fiber.” By 1990, that had become, “Choose a diet with plenty of vegetables, fruits, and grain products.” Today, the new, direct directive is to make half of your plate vegetables and fruits. Maybe the whole plate: The Guidelines say right out, no mincing words here, that vegetable-rich diets promise a variety of health benefits, including lower weight, a lower risk of heart disease, and — best of all — a longer life.
The Guidelines’ Appendix 5, “Healthy Vegetarian Eating Pattern,” and Table A5-1, “Healthy Vegetarian Eating Pattern: Recommended Amounts of Food from Each Food Group at 12 Calorie Levels,” make the choices easy to follow. You can find even more reader-friendly Dummies-style info on this subject in Plant-Based Diet For Dummies, by Marni Wasserman (Wiley).
Get up and go
Regular physical activity is one of the simplest — and most important — things you can do on your own to improve your health.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services’ 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans (online at www.health.gov/paguidelines/guidelines/), healthy adults need at least 2.5 hours of moderately intense physical activity each week, including muscle-strengthening exercises on two or more days each week. You won’t be surprised to read that one chart in the new Guidelines, Figure I-2 to be exact (“Percentage of Adults Meeting the Physical Activity Guidelines”), shows that American adults aren’t up to snuff. So get moving.
Exercise and weight
When you take in more calories from food than you use up running your body systems (heart, lungs, brain, and so on) and doing a day’s physical work, you end up storing the extra calories as body fat. In other words, you gain weight. The reverse also is true. When you spend more energy in a day than you take in as food, you pull the extra energy you need out of stored body fat, and you lose weight.
You don’t have to be a mathematician to reduce this principle to two simple equations in which E stands for energy (in calories), > stands for greater than, < stands for less than, and W stands for the change in weight:
- If E in > E out: E total = +W
- If E in < E out: E total = –W
It’s not Einstein’s theory of relativity, but you get the picture.
For real-life examples of how the energy-in, energy-out theory works, stick your bookmark in this page and go to Chapter 3 to find out how to calculate the number of calories a person can consume each day without pushing up the poundage.
Even being mildly active increases the number of calories you can wolf down without gaining weight. The more strenuous the activity, the more plentiful the calorie allowance. Suppose that you’re a 25-year-old man who weighs 140 pounds. The formula in Chapter 3 shows that you require 1,652 calories a day to run your body systems. Clearly, you need more calories for doing your daily physical work, simply moving around, or exercising.
Other reasons to exercise
Weight control is a good reason to step up your exercise level. But it isn’t the only one. Here are four more:
- Exercise increases muscles. When you exercise regularly, you end up with more muscle tissue than the average bear. Because muscle tissue weighs more than fat tissue, athletes (even weekend-warrior types) may end up weighing more than they did before they started exercising to lose weight. But a higher muscle-to-fat ratio is healthier and more important in the long run than actual weight in pounds. Exercise that changes your body’s ratio of muscle to fat gives you a leg up in the longevity race.
- Exercise reduces the amount of fat stored in your body. People who are fat around the middle as opposed to the hips (in other words an apple shape versus a pear shape) are at higher risk of weight-related illness. Exercise helps reduce abdominal fat and thus lowers your risk of weight-related diseases. Use a tape measure to identify your own body type by comparing your waistline to your hips (around the buttocks). If your waist (abdomen) is bigger, you’re an apple. If your hips are bigger, you’re a pear.
- Exercise strengthens your bones. Osteoporosis (thinning of the bones that leads to repeated fractures) doesn’t happen only to little old ladies. True, on average, a woman’s bones thin faster and more dramatically than a man’s, but after the mid-30s, everybody — male and female — begins losing bone density. Exercise can slow, halt, or in some cases even reverse the process. In addition, being physically active develops muscles that help support bones. Stronger bones equal less risk of fracture, which, in turn, equals less risk of potentially fatal complications.
- Exercise increases brainpower. You know that aerobic exercise increases the flow of oxygen to the heart, but did you also know that it increases the flow of oxygen to the brain? When a rush job (or a rush of anxiety) keeps you up all night, a judicious exercise break can keep you bright until dawn. According to nutrition research scientist Judith J. Wurtman, PhD, when you’re awake and working during hours that you’d normally be asleep, your internal body rhythms tell your body to cool down, even though your brain is racing along. Simply standing up and stretching, walking around the room, or doing a couple of sit-ups every hour or so speeds up your metabolism, warms up your muscles, increases your ability to stay awake, and, in Dr. Wurtman’s words, “prolongs your ability to work smart into the night.” Eureka!
How to exercise
There are three basic types of activity to strengthen heart and lungs, muscles, and bones.
- Aerobic activity increases heart rate and breathing. Moderate aerobic activity includes walking briskly, bicycling on a level path, and dancing. Intense aerobic activity includes jogging, playing tennis, or bicycling uphill.
- Muscle-strengthening activity, such as resistance training, increases the mass and strength of skeletal muscles — that is, your arms, legs, back, and so on.
- Bone-building activity is any exercise, such as running or lifting weights, that makes an impact on your bones.
Not everybody can — or should — run right out and start chopping down trees or throwing touchdown passes to control his or her weight. In fact, if you’ve gained a lot of weight recently, have been overweight for a long time, haven’t exercised in a while, or have a chronic medical condition, you need to check with your doctor before starting any new regimen. (Caution: Check out of any health club that puts you right on the floor without first checking your vital signs — heartbeat, respiration, and so on.)