Does National Nutrition Policy Matter? 2015 Diet and Nutrition Guideline Review

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Frank Hu, MD, PhD, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, provides insight into the report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which spends days reviewing hundreds of thousands of scientific studies in order to develop the report that will later become the basis for policy decision making, according to Dr Hu.

With his help, Dr Hu says that the Advisory Committee provides science-based recommendations to the federal government on various focus areas including food, health, and physical activity and its relationship to reducing major chronic diseases, and other lifestyle-related health problems as well as how best to achieve good health at the individual and greater population level. Dr Hu details the step-by-step review process the Committee takes when sorting through the scientific documents as well as the potential public areas its recommendations could make an impact.

The Committee reviewed the country’s current health status and found that 117 million Americans face preventable chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes; the committee also found that 1 in 3 children are overweight or obese. Dr Hu said the Committee recommends that policy decisions focus on individualized approaches to dietary patterns, remove restrictions on total fats in terms of percentages of calories as some types of fats are proving more important, and eliminate restrictions on dietary cholesterol.

The Advisory Committee recommendations that Dr Hu collaborated on are currently sitting with the secretaries of the US Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services, who are translating the evidence-based details of the report into a policy document.