Erin Allman-Updike

Who is going to be affected by these changes besides our global reputation?

Ready?

Oh, yeah.

So we're going to also go good, bad, and ugly.

Or, like, I'm going to start with, like, probably beneficial changes, somewhat maybe neutral changes, and then baseless changes that are probably harmful to our health.

I wonder which those are.

I can't wait to tell you.

So the first thing to know is that they really are not that different from previous iterations.

Guidelines for forever have emphasized the importance of whole grains, whole fruits and vegetables, limiting added sugar, limiting sodium, and limiting our saturated fat to less than 10% of our total calories.

That has not changed at all.

These guidelines, similar to the guidelines from 2020 as well, also include a one pager on nutrition information like geared towards infants and toddlers, which is quite well put together and very, very similar to the 2020 guidelines.

Right.

But there are a few big changes, like I said, four that we're going to go through.

So the first big change is that this is the first dietary guidelines for Americans to specifically emphasize that we should be avoiding consumption of, quote,

Highly processed, packaged, prepared, ready to eat, unquote, foods or other snacky foods.

And they list specifically chips, cookies, candy as the types of foods they're talking about.

And they emphasize the need to prioritize what they call nutrient dense foods.

They go so far as to recommend that no amount of added sugars or non-nutritive sweeteners is needed or recommended in a diet.

And multiple times in different sections of these guidelines, they call out refined grains, added sugar, and added salt or sodium as something that we should be avoiding.

including things like sugar-sweetened beverages, which they have been railing against for a very long time now, and fruit juices.