Experts: Diet Advice Must Be Easy to Follow

Dietary advice has to be easy to follow and fit the American lifestyle to be successful, two researchers told the panel overhauling the U.S. government’s 10 guidelines for healthy living on Tuesday.

Dietary advice has to be easy to follow and fit the American lifestyle to be successful, two researchers told the panel overhauling the U.S. government’s 10 guidelines for healthy living on Tuesday. The 13-member advisory committee plans to wrap up its work by summer, said chairwoman Janet King, with a technical report to the Health and Agriculture departments, which jointly publish the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Two-thirds of Americans are overweight and 30 percent are obese. Early this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said obesity was catching up with smoking as the leading cause of death in the United States. The current set of guidelines, issued in 2000, urges Americans to eat a variety of grains, fruits and vegetables, to limit their consumption of fat, sugar and salt, and to be physically active each day. The guidelines form the basis for the government’s well-known food pyramid. Barbara Rolls of Pennsylvania State University said people tend to eat the same amount of food, so a “low density diet” using lower-calorie foods, such as fruits, vegetables, grains, lean protein and soups, with a satisfying bulk helped them lose weight. Rolls has written a book on volumetric weight control. Richard Mattes, a Purdue University professor of food and nutrition, said weight mattered more than volume when it came to satisfying the senses involved in eating. Some people abandon volumetric diets with a complaint it required too much effort to buy and prepare fruits and vegetables, he said. “It did not fit their lifestyle. It was not effective,” Mattes said. “Trying to force everyone into one slot is not going to work.” Rolls said dietary plans had to be affordable, employ readily available foods and fit people’s lifestyles to be successful. The government’s Food Guide Pyramid was first developed in 1992 to provide a general outline on how much a healthy person should eat each day from the five major food groups. It is the main educational tool used to help consumers interpret the federal dietary guidelines. (Source: Reuters Health, March 2004)