I was reading the papers this morning (our local newspaper + "The Wall Street Journal" + the New York Times breaking news) and saw an interesting article in the local paper titled "Four Steps to Fighting Obesity." It even had a box titled "Putting limits on sodium." Well that certainly got my attention and led me to a great website: www.dietaryguidelines.gov.

It seems a 13-member advisory committee (called the DGAC) of health and nutrition experts was set up by the two relevant government agencies, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS). They've been working a couple of years and their charge was to update, if necessary (and I'm sure it is) the 2005 Dietary Guidelines.

The website led me to a very large document and thus far I've read the nine-page Executive Summary and printed off another thirty-two pages on "Sodium, Potassium and Water." I'll read that section later, but the overview made me decide to pause in my posts on Omega-3s and point you toward the 2010 guidelines. At this stage the public has thirty days to comment on them before it's made final. I doubted it will change much, but a professor of nutrition posted on "The Atlantic" website some comments that made me wonder.

First this set of dietary guidelines has to be reviewed every five years, by Congressional fiat. Then the professor, Marion Nestle, has written a book titled "Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health." I just ordered a paperback copy of her revised edition and also a copy of her book, "What to Eat." She doesn't think the guidelines change much from version to version

I'll await the final version of the 2010 DGAC Report, but in a nutshell they're recommending we get our dietary sodium intake way down (70% of us need to go to 1,500 mg/day), eat less saturated fat. exercise more, avoid junk food, and follow Michael Pollan's advice: "Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much."

I'm doing that already; we got our first "Couple Veggie Share" delivery Monday from our local CSA
and will soon be starting on our "fruit share." What I want to see is the final ideas on how the vast majority of us can also eat healthy, affordable fresh fruits and vegetables. Now if the committee can solve that quandary and convince Americans to follow the Dietary Guidelines, we may get somewhere.

So here's the problem (and perhaps the answer): We've got to do something and soon. The issue starts with kids and what they eat; if we don't find a way to change that, we're not doing our primary job as parents and grandparents and citizens.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Dieting, Healthly lifestyle, Healthy eating, medically-oriented background info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.