The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have recently released their guidelines for healthy eating. These guidelines are meant to help people prevent health problems.
The guidelines emphasize the importance of eating a “wide variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, and dairy products, while staying away from processed foods heavy in saturated fats, sugar, and cholesterol” (and trans fats). They also recommend significantly reducing the amount of added sugars and sugar-sweetened beverages from the American diet.
They really highlight the importance of eating a wide variety of foods. They also acknowledge that focusing on “small shifts in what we eat and drink” makes it easier to eat healthy. Another way to make a change is to focus on patterns and not just individual food choices.
These “common sense” guidelines are equally aimed at and important for lay people and health care providers. Although they don’t contain drastically different or new information, they make a basic point about healthy eating for everyone.