The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the government’s advice for healthful diets, are issued every five years but almost all of the work is done in two years by a panel of experts selected for the job. A National Academies of Sciences report, ordered by Congress because of sore feelings over the direction of the most recent panel, proposes an overhaul that would stretch work on each edition of the guidelines across five years.
“The five-year cycle time can be leveraged more effectively by redistributing the tasks” of the advisory panel of expert “to other entities,” says the report. “While separation of tasks adds additional components and potentially cost to the overall process, more targeted expertise can be dedicated to completing a specific task, resulting in higher-quality inputs into the synthesis of evidence, and more time for deliberations, stakeholder engagement and transparency-related activities.”
Under the redesign, a new Dietary Guidelines Planning and Continuity Group would shepherd work on the guidelines. It would identify topics and questions for review. Technical expert panels would delve into scientific issues. “The synthesis and interpretation of evidence, as well as development of conclusions, would be the primary focus of a Dietary Guidelines Scientific Advisory Committee,” with the Agriculture and Health departments ultimately responsible for issuing each edition.
The scientific advisory committee would be allotted a year to assemble its recommendations for the new edition of the guidelines. Since the Dietary Guidelines were created three decades ago, an advisory committee of experts has been appointed to a two-year term to recommend updates. The panel reports run into hundreds of pages and often are the foundation of the new edition.
Panelists working on the 2015 edition recommended long-term sustainability of food production be a consideration in diets. The Republican-controlled Congress restricted the 2015 guidelines to nutritional and dietary guidelines and ordered the $1 million outside review to ensure future editions are even-handed and “based on strong, balanced science.” Cattle ranchers and other farm groups said the advisory panel unfairly attacked red meat consumption. The 2015 guidelines were the first to recommend a limit on added sugars in the diet to no more than 10 percent of overall calories.