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Working together to prepare a healthy meal can make it easier for families, including young children, to eat more nutritiously. New federal nutrition guidelines advise cutting back on sugar.
Working together to prepare a healthy meal can make it easier for families, including young children, to eat more nutritiously. New federal nutrition guidelines advise cutting back on sugar.
Photo: Tom Werner
Working together to prepare a healthy meal can make it easier for families, including young children, to eat more nutritiously. New federal nutrition guidelines advise cutting back on sugar.
Working together to prepare a healthy meal can make it easier for families, including young children, to eat more nutritiously. New federal nutrition guidelines advise cutting back on sugar.
Photo: Tom Werner
The government has issued new dietary guidelines to take Americans through 2025, ideally with less added sugar — and none for young children.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issue the guidelines every five years, using them to set standards for school lunches and other programs.
General guidelines continue to advise loading your plate with fruits and vegetables while cutting back on sweets, saturated fats and sodium.
“When you’re feeding families, it’s important to make sure that you keep offering those (healthy) foods, not really forcing the child to eat them at all, but having them there because eventually they want to try it and they may find that they like it,” said Karen Sibert, a registered dietitian at Passavant Area Hospital.
The updated guidelines advise feeding infants only breast milk for at least six months after birth and allowing children under age 2 no added sugar. If breast milk isn’t available, infants should get iron-fortified infant formula during the first year. Babies also should get supplemental vitamin D beginning soon after birth.
“It’s never too early to start,” said Barbara Schneeman, a nutritionist at University of California, Davis. “You have to make every bite count in those early years.”
Noting that the little things add up, the guidelines recommend small changes, such as substituting plain shredded wheat for frosted cereal and choosing low-sodium canned goods.
While children under 2 should get no added sugar in their meals, the guidelines recommend that everyone — child and adult — limit added sugar. They didn’t go as far as advisers requested earlier this year to recommend that added sugar account for less than 6% of calories, sticking instead with an earlier 10% of calories after age 2.
In the typical U.S. diet, the biggest source of added sugar is soft drinks, desserts, candy, other snacks, and sweetened coffee and tea — all foods that contribute little nutrition.
The guidelines also stopped short of scientific advisers’ recommendation that men should limit alcohol to one drink a day — such as a 12-ounce can of beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine or a shot of liquor. Instead, two drinks a day for men and one drink a day for women still have the guidelines’ OK.
Dr. Westley Clark of Santa Clara University said that’s appropriate. Heavy drinking and binge drinking are harmful, he said, but the evidence isn’t as clear for moderate drinking.
Lowering the limit for men likely would be socially, religiously or culturally unacceptable to many, said Clark, noting that it could have ripple effects for the rest of the guidelines.
“They need to be acceptable to people,” he said. “Otherwise, they’ll reject it outright and we’ll be worse off. If you lose the public, these guidelines have no merit whatsoever.”
Even healthy dietary changes should be made carefully, Sibert said.
“I think like with anything else, if you’re wanting to make changes in what you’re eating, definitely check with your health care professional about doing that and look at one change that you can make, as opposed to trying to make all of these changes” at once, Sibert said.
Other recommendations:
• Babies can start eating other food at about 6 months and should be introduced to potential allergenic foods along with other foods.
• To promote healthy brain development in their babies, pregnant and breastfeeding women should eat from 8 to 12 ounces of seafood a week. They should be sure to choose fish — such as cod, salmon, sardines and tilapia — with lower levels of mercury, which can harm children’s nervous systems.
• Pregnant women should not drink alcohol, and breastfeeding women should be cautious. Caffeine in modest amounts appears safe, though women should discuss it with their doctors.
• Read labels. Information on the “Nutrition Facts” label on packaged foods contains information on added sugars, saturated fats and sodium.
There’s an app to help people follow the guidelines available through the government’s My Plate website at myplate.gov.
