If you were hoping to see where ultra-processed foods might fit in the next Dietary Guidelines for Americans, hold that thought.
Scientific experts tasked with advising federal officials drafting the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans said the data were far too limited to draw conclusions. Meeting Monday, the first of two days of presentations, they discussed research findings to inform a report to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture. The results will be published in December.
Ultra-processed foods don’t have a recognized definition or a robust body of scientific literature that has studied them, they said, so guidelines would be premature.
“I think until we get a better definition for what we mean as ‘ultra-processed foods,’ it’s going to be difficult to look at this,” said Deanna Hoelscher of the UT Health Houston School of Public Health.
But when it’s time for the next iteration of guidelines, that should change, said Deirdre Kay Tobias of Harvard University. “Ultra-processed foods are not going to be an issue that goes away,” she said. “I think in the next five years, research is going to explode. In five years, hopefully this isn’t sort of punted again.”
Meanwhile, the scientists heard a drumbeat of discouraging data but looked with hope toward a better understanding of cultural differences in dietary patterns.
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“We’re all eating poorly,” Heather Eicher-Miller of Purdue University said, summarizing her subcommittee’s review of dietary analyses, food patterns, and the prevalence of nutrition-related chronic health conditions. The group’s review of research confirmed the strong association found in 2015 and 2020 between unhealthy foods and a higher risk of chronic conditions.
“We’re not going to solve chronic disease without solving the dietary component,” said Chris Taylor of Ohio State University. “This data just once again strengthens that linkage between the lifestyle factors that contribute to health outcomes.”
There was one bright spot. Consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is down among children and adolescents, who are drinking more water instead. But such a substitution is not as easy for food as for sugar-sweetened beverages. That prompted Tobias to observe how few simple alternatives there are to counter the multitude of unhealthy foods.
“The foods have to be available for some equal swap to be made,” she said. “I think it’s really important to figure out how everyone can benefit and not just those who can afford or at times make the more difficult substitution.”
Cheryl Anderson of the University of California, San Diego, cautioned against pointing to individual food choices when it’s beyond most people’s control. “We need to meet people where they are,” she said.
When it comes to ingredients well known to harm health, it’s a major flaw of the food supply, Tobias said. Take omnipresent sodium, she said. “It’s not behavior, it’s supply.”
Taylor and others acknowledged that removing one unhealthy ingredient could mean replacing it with another one, such as lower sodium but higher fat.
“It isn’t just one dimensional,” he said. “Nutrition is more complicated. Addressing one problem may lead to challenges in other spaces.”
Research on nutrition is demanding, particularly when it comes to understanding populations whose diets include different components reflecting different cultures. Taylor led research simulating how the three currently recognized dietary patterns — healthy U.S. style, healthy vegetarian, Mediterranean style — compare to healthy dietary patterns among American Indian and Native Alaskans. The conclusion from the modeling exercise? Variations still added up to an overall healthy pattern.
The three current patterns emphasize vegetables and fruits, encouraging beans, legumes, and fish or seafood as sources of protein while limiting red or processed meat and suggesting low-fat or non-fat dairy and unsaturated fats.
Do the three patterns become one? The discussion got animated when committee chair Sarah Booth of Tufts University proposed having the new guidelines recommend just one healthy dietary pattern instead of three, all to encourage flexibility in addressing diversity among different cultures.
Another suggestion was to start the draft advice on how to list protein foods with plant-based sources first, then seafood, eggs, poultry, and meat. Then it got more complicated. Where do you list beans, peas, and lentils? Under vegetables or proteins?
Stay tuned. After a more detailed discussion of specific nutrients, the advisory committee adjourned to reconvene Tuesday, when beverages and fats are on the agenda. But not alcoholic beverages. The committee recommended that HHS and USDA follow the lead of scientific reviews underway within HHS and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
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