Key Points
- The Dietary Guidelines for Americans provides advice on what to eat and drink to meet nutrient needs, promote health, and prevent disease.
- The U.S. Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS) work together to update and release the Dietary Guidelines for Americans every five years. Each edition of the Dietary Guidelines reflects the current body of nutrition science.
- It is developed and written for a professional audience, including policymakers, health care providers, nutrition educators, and federal nutrition program operators.
- The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025 is the current edition.
FIM Opportunities
The Dietary Guidelines provides science-based recommendations on what Americans should eat and drink to promote health and prevent chronic disease — including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
Of the 60 percent of adults in the United States who currently are living with one or more diet-related chronic conditions, the majority are people with a condition that is included in the evidence base of the Dietary Guidelines.
For people living with hypertension, high cholesterol, prediabetes, overweight, and obesity, the evidence shows they would benefit from following the Dietary Guidelines recommendations to prevent progression to disease, such as cardiovascular disease.
While the Dietary Guidelines is not intended to be clinical guidelines for treating diet-related chronic diseases, the Dietary Guidelines has served as a reference for federal, medical, voluntary, and patient care organizations as they develop clinical nutrition guidance tailored for people living with a specific medical condition.
Health professionals can adapt the Dietary Guidelines to meet the specific needs of their patients with chronic diseases, as part of a multi-faceted treatment plan. In this way, the Dietary Guidelines serve as a foundational piece of America’s larger nutrition guidance landscape.
The Dietary Guidelines provides a customizable framework for healthy eating that can be tailored and adapted to meet personal, cultural, and traditional preferences.
