Some are concerned that the advisory committee for the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans is considering issues outside of the nutritional focus of the panel. Julie McPeake reports.
Scope of Dietary Guidelines Committee
Every five years, consumers are provided with updated recommendations for healthy food choices. The next set of guidelines comes out in 2015. Some are concerned that the advisory committee for the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans is considering issues outside of the nutritional focus of the panel. Those concerns were expressed in a recent report, which stated the advisory committee is showing an interest in incorporating sustainability, climate change, and other environmental factors and production practices into their criteria for establishing the next set of dietary guidelines. The report says these other issues are clearly outside of the scope of the nutritional panel.
The committee requests that the USDA secretary ensure that the advisory committee focuses only on nutrition.