US Dietary Guidelines 2015 Expected to Promote Healthy Fat Consumption

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An advisory committee for the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans has concluded that there is no health benefit to limiting total fat in a diet, despite the conclusions of previous Guidelines.

For the past two Guidelines there has been a restriction on the total amount of fat people should consume. In the 2005 and the 2010 Guidelines people were advised that only 20 to 35 percent of their total daily calories should be made up of fat.

The 2015 advisory committee however, did not place importance in the total amount of fat a person consumed, but rather the type of fat a food product contained, reports CNN.

Barbara Millen, president of Millennium Prevention, and chair of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, said: "We wanted the emphasis to be on fat quality rather than total fat, because the evidence really emphasized that saturated fat is the driver of risk rather than total fat intake."

Dr. Daruish Mozaffarian, dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University explains on HNGN: "Modern evidence clearly shows that eating more foods rich in healthful fats like nuts, vegetable oils and fish have protective effects, particularly for cardiovascular disease...It's the food that matters, not its fat content."

He goes on to say that other foods containing fat like whole milk or cheese are neutral in terms of health, while low-fat foods can either be better or worse than full-fat alternatives.

The committee decided that polyunsaturated fats, which can be found in vegetable oils, can decrease the risk of heart disease, while monosaturated fats, found in olive and peanut oil, were also declared healthy for the heart by the committee.

Millen states that the committee wants consumers to know that there are many different healthy diets to choose from in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

CNN reports that the committee describes three dietary patterns in their report: the Healthy U.S.-Style, the Healthy Mediterranean-Style, and the Healthy Vegetarian. 

In addition, the committee also lists the amount of different foods, like fruits and whole grains, that need to be consumed in order to gain a certain range of healthy calories.

According to CNN, the U.S. Department of Heath and Human Services along with the Department of Agriculture will base this year's Dietary Guidelines on the advisory committee's report.

Dr. Mozaffarian explain that the Dietary Guidelines for Americans can directly affect school lunches, food supplement programs for women and children, and nutrition at government work sites. It can also indirectly affect consumer choices and food manufacturers.