Advisory committee for the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans releases its report

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So if this is the kind of thing that interests you, proceed with haste to the website containing the report and devour to your heart’s content!

For a quicker overview, here’s the executive summary.

A public comment period follows before the final report is released.

‘Written comments will be accepted from June 15, 2010, to July 15, 2010. Oral testimony may be provided at a public meeting to be held in Washington, D.C., on July 8, 2010,’ according to a news release from the Department of Health and Human Services.

For a lively take on why we should care about this once-every-five-years drill the government goes through -- especially since most of the bits of advice are so common-sensical -- read NYU nutrition professor Marion Nestle’s June 15 blog entry on the topic.

Nestle notes, first off, that these guidelines haven’t really changed much since the first ones were put together in 1980: ‘That’s a lot of trouble to go through to get to basically the same place.’ The government does it because it has to by law -- and what makes the exercise interesting is that ‘every word of the dietary guidelines is fraught with politics,’ she writes.

In other words, these documents matter, a lot, to the food industry, because they influence (really??) what people eat, as well as things like school lunch programs. I watched a couple of advisory committee meetings during the run-up to the 2005 guidelines, and yes, the audience was a sea of industry reps taking notes and rushing out at breaks to phone HQ with the latest -- separated from the deliberating advisory committee by a tidy velvet rope.

One difference in the guidelines this time: The committee is advising we pull back even further on our consumption of salt, with a goal of 1,500 milligrams a day or less. The 2005 guidelines recommended 2,300 mg for adults and 1,500 mg for certain groups (people with high blood pressure, blacks and middle-aged and older adults).

Update: Here’s a link to the Los Angeles Times story on the committee report by Andy Zajac.

-- Rosie Mestel

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