2010 Dietary Guidelines

After reviewing the 2005 and 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, I found that there are four key recommendations to these guidelines and they are as follows:

-          Balancing calories to manage weight.  This is where a person needs to improve their eating habits as well as focus more on exercising.  The amount of food we eat needs to equal the amount of energy our body needs and uses, so  if we are not exercising and eating wrong we will see an imbalance of weight and calories.  

 -          Reduce certain foods and food components.   Here is where we first need to recognize the foods that have little to no nutritional value and can potentially have harmful effects on our health.  Once we have a handle on those foods, we then need to reduce the amount of consumption.  A few examples of these foods are sodium, saturated and transfatty acids, cholesterol, added sugar, solid fats and alcoholic beverages.

 -          Foods and nutrients that need to be increased.   Here again, we as society need to understand which foods are healthy for us to consume.  Once we know what those are, we need to concentrate and put our efforts into eating foods such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat milk products and protein foods.  It is also important to include variety and eat foods such as seafood and legumes in lieu of proteins such as poultry.

 -          Building healthy eating habits.  This is where one makes lifestyle changes and creates healthy eating patterns that allow one to get the right amount of energy and nutrients for their body without causing any risk to their health, illness or chronic disease.

The way that these recommendations compare to the realities of the U.S. diet is through the Healthy Eating Index.  According to our text, “The HEI allows comparison between the recommendations and various aspects of a diet and yields a score.”(Sizer & Whitney, 2012).   Candidly speaking not very many people are following these guidelines.   I say this because we are seeing many older people with chronic disease caused by eating the wrong foods and worse our children are now suffering obesity at an alarming rate.   “Obesity has become quite common among children aged 6-11 years.  In fact, obesity increased from 6.5% in 1980 to 19.6% in 2008.”(Blackwell, W., 2010).  Also, there are points given for the food category that we should be eating and sadly the current American score is 58 out of 100.  This means that we are not eating enough of the healthy foods such as fruits, vegetables and low fat dairy products, but are eating the unhealthy ones that contain ingredients such as high sodium, cholesterol and solid fat foods.  After understanding and examining the components of the food label and learning about the nutrition and ingredients I can honestly say that I put items back now that I know a little more about the ingredients and what it means.  If something has an item that begins with sugar or has a high percentage of sodium, I put it back.  I still feel a little overwhelmed by all of the small print, the percentages, and the weird names for the ingredient, so I am not so sure that this information will be helpful to all Americans.  We need something a little simpler to read and review and unfortunately there are just too many items to choose from along with many advertising and marketing gimmicks that can lure a person to make an unhealthy choice.  We need to be realistic and provide information that does not require a person to take a health class to understand. 

By the way, I have a question for the class. 

Black-Wiley (2010, February).  Most parents don’t realize their 4 or 5 year olds are

      overweight or obese.  NewsRX Health 134.  Retrieved February 8, 2013, from

      Proquest Health and Medical Complete.

Sizer, F.S. & Whitney, E. (2012). Nutrition concepts and controversies. (12th ed.). Belmont,

     CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning