Dietary Guidelines for Americans •

Saturated fats are one of the main concerns in the American diet.

(Mirror Daily, United States) – The eight edition of the dietary guidelines address cholesterol, saturated fats and sugar. The guidelines did not change significantly ever since the seventh edition that was released in 2010, but they focus more on dietary cholesterol, added sugars, saturated fats and they also included the consumption of coffee as a healthy habit.

According to the latest edition of the dietary guidelines aimed at the American people, coffee is not an enemy anymore, but rather an ally of a healthy lifestyle, if consumed with moderation. The FDA advises that the caffeine intake shouldn’t surpass 400 mg a day. But they do make a note that people who don’t usually drink coffee shouldn’t take it up just because it is now considered healthy.

The 2015-2020 dietary guidelines address cholesterol, saturated fats and sugar as the main concerns the American people should have when calculating their dietary requirements and planning a meal. The novelty of the new dietary guidelines is the fact that dietary cholesterol is no longer considered a health threat.

The previous guidelines limited the consumption of dietary cholesterol to 300 mg per day, but the latest issue says that it is no longer considered a factor in the process of building a healthy lifestyle. While they do say there is a need of additional research on the link between blood cholesterol and dietary cholesterol level, it seems that nutritionists and dietitians are not blaming it anymore for the heart problems of the American people.

But that doesn’t mean that fast food restaurants should be assaulted by people thinking it’s ok to eat food high in cholesterol. The dietary guidelines focus on the ever increasing intake of trans fats and saturated fats in the American plates. Cholesterol may have been removed, for now, from the list of dietary enemies of the blood vessels, but saturated fats are still responsible for hypertension, blood clots, diabetes and even stomach problems, like gastritis.

The last on the list of novelty subjects on which the dietary guidelines focused in the 2015-2020 edition is sugar. It is a well-known fact that the majority of processed foods, drinks and desserts that are on the present moment available on the American market are packed with added sugar.

Only a single Coke can contains approximately 7 teaspoons of added sugar, if you also count the sugar in the morning coffee, in the dough from which the morning bagel was made, from the slice of pizza and the ketchup on top you had for lunch and the from the dressing you drizzled on top of your salad at dinner you get an astonishing result.

Food in America is packed with added sugar, which is why the average citizen consumes almost double the daily recommended dose.

The new dietary guidelines address cholesterol, saturated fats and sugar. The FDA recommends the people to change their diets slowly to avoid stressing out the body.

Image source: www.wikipedia.org

According to new rules set in by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which were released Thursday, eggs and coffee have insinuated themselves into the nutritionists’ favour. So having more than a cup of coffee a day is ok; so is eating more than one egg per day.

But what nutritionists called for was a more environmentally friendly diet, that’s lower in red and processed meats. Salt limits have become more permissive, but sugar ones have kept their stakes high. Sugar is incredibly harmful, especially for children and young adults.

The final 2015 dietary guidelines will be written down by the end of the year. They basically affect everything from subsidised school lunches to supermarket labels, going all the way to your doctor’s advice.

“These guidelines can have a huge impact on people’s diets and ultimately our natural resources. The production and consumption of meat in the U.S. requires massive amounts of pesticides, fertilisers, feed, land and water. (..) Particularly for us here in California, with the drought, reducing meat consumption can reduce pressure on resources like water,”

Kari Hamerschlag, senior program manager at Berkeley-based Friends of the Earth, explained.

According to the panel’s report, global food production is responsible for no less than 80% of the planet’s deforestation, 70 % of freshwater use and also 30% of human-generated greenhouse gases. But people are not advised to eliminate meat from their diet completely. They are simply encouraged to reduce its consumption.

But the good news is that enjoying that extra cup of coffee after you’ve already had 3 seems to be less of a problem. The report explains that coffee can reduce the risk of diabetes and of heart disease, too. But the worst thing you can do is to serve your coffee with plenty of sugar, which shouldn’t represent more than 200 calories a day.

So the panel also underlined the fact that consuming too much cholesterol-rich foods, like eggs, is not such a bad thing after all. The so called “fat-free” food have significantly contributed to obesity and health problems among American citizens, as cholesterol has been significantly substituted with carbs, which have proved to be really bad for our bodies if consumed in large amounts, embracing carb foods in our obsession for avoiding bad cholesterol. So moderation is the answer, after all.

Dietary Guidelines Address Cholesterol, Saturated Fats and Sugar

Eggs and Coffee Regain Respect in the Eyes of Nutritionists

Categories