HHS, USDA release dietary guideline recommendations for comment

The departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture today released for public comment a federal advisory committee’s recommendations for updating the Dietary Guidelines for Americans in 2015. Among other actions, the committee recommends the guidelines “seek a paradigm shift in health care and public health toward a greater focus on prevention and integration with food systems,” including incentivizing and supporting health care providers in encouraging healthy dietary and physical activity and offering healthy food choices for patients, visitors and staff. “It will take concerted, bold action on the part of individuals, families, communities, industry and government to achieve and maintain healthy dietary patterns and the levels of physical activity needed to promote a healthy U.S. population,” the report states. “This will entail dramatic paradigm shifts in which population health is a national priority and individuals, communities, and the public and private sectors seek together to achieve a population-wide ‘culture of health’ through which healthy lifestyle choices are easy, accessible, affordable and normative – both at home and away from home.”