New Dietary Guidelines For Americans From 2015-2020 Released! 'Red Meat' Taken Out Completely?

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans have been updated every five years. With the country's superior nutrition experts' feedback and recommendations, the Dietary Guidelines would be revised accordingly. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015 has been recently released and below is a gist of it:

The list is available exclusively on health.gov. And in the coming months, the U.S. Government will be releasing a printed edition and a downloadable one that will be available online.

The revised edition has a wide range of influence from school lunch programs and federal nutrition policy to dietary manuals and medical practitioners' advices put in a simple language.

The revised recommendation is that the citizens of America should consume more vegetables and Fruits and Lesser amounts of Sugar, Saturated fat and salt.

As cited by International Business Times, Michael Jacobson (head of advocacy group centre for science) said "The problem is that the food industry has continued to pressure and tempt us to eat a diet of burgers, pizzas, burritos, cookies, doughnuts, sodas, shakes and other foods loaded with white flour, red and processed meat, salt, saturated fat, and added sugars, and not enough vegetables, fruit, and whole grains."

The main purpose of the new dietary guidelines for Americans that began in the year 2015 are based on scientific evidence and is aimed to help people eat more healthily and reduce their risks of acquiring chronic illnesses.

Here's a list of a few important recommendations:

1.       Consume large portions of fruits, vegetables

2.       Less than 2300 milligrams of sodium per day

3.       Less than 10 percent of everyday calories from sugar

4.       Less than 10 percent of everyday calories from saturated fats

5.       'Healthy eating pattern' refers to a variety of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fat-free or low-fat dairy, protein varieties that include lean meat, poultry and oil.

In addition to these, it is suggested that consuming less meat and more amount of fruits and vegetables not mainly for health reasons but also to lower the environmental impact of the country's diet. Also, in an unexpected move, Cholesterol has been removed from the list of suspect substances.

Controversy: The term "red meat" is not found anywhere in the revised edition. While red meat is considered one of the main sources of saturated fats that the guidelines prohibit and with an expert panel recommending less consumption of red & processed meat, thus creating a controversy!

The New Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015-2010 (that was supposed to be released last year) builds from the 2010 edition with revisions based on scientific reports of the advisory committee, federal agency and comments from the public.