Congress has spent seven years and 2 million dollars trying to improve the rigor and transparency of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), our nation’s top nutrition policy. With Congressional funds, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) in 2017 conducted the first-ever outside peer-review of the guidelines process and issued 11 recommendations.

Why do kids in public schools get served donuts and orange juice for breakfast, a meal guaranteed to send blood sugars soaring, rather than a sugar-free, protein-rich option, like scrambled eggs? The unfortunate answer is that the donut meal accords with our nation’s top nutrition policy, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which despite its influence has been found by a new study to contain outdated science and not reflect the “preponderance of scientific and medical knowledge,” as required by law.

The Nutrition Coalition (TNC), together with the Society for Metabolic Health Practitioners (SMHP), today submitted a proposal to the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health.

Members of the Nutrition Coalition deeply mourn the loss of Dr. Sarah Hallberg, who served as the head of our group’s scientific council and was also a member of the governing board.

The Nutrition Coalition (TNC) has worked to encourage that the US Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) be evidence based and inclusive of all Americans. With the 9th iteration of the DGA released today, TNC remains concerned that this highly influential policy document addresses only a minority of Americans, excluding the 60% of the population, according to the CDC, diagnosed with one or more diet-related chronic disease.

The Nutrition Coalition (TNC) submitted its public comments to the USDA regarding the final expert report by the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. The 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, due out at the end of this year, will be based on this report.

Following today’s release of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee’s (DGAC) expert report, which will serve as the underpinning for the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), the Nutrition Coalition, a non-profit group that aims to bring rigorous science to nutrition policy, urged the agencies overseeing the process, the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services (USDA-HHS), to make important changes ahead of the release of the Guidelines in order to redress the significant problems with the expert report.

Leading Scientists, Including Former Members of USDA Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committees, Publish State-of-the-Art Review Finding Current Government Caps on Saturated Fats are No Longer Justified. Yet 2020 Dietary Guidelines Committee Insists Cap Should Stay Firmly in Place.

The draft report presented at the final meeting of the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) on June 17 was yet another disappointment in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) process. Despite numerous groups in recent weeks expressing profound concerns about the narrow scope of the Guidelines—including only healthy people—as well as a myriad of ways the process lacks scientific rigor and transparency, the DGAC made no attempt to address these issues.

Open Letter Requests Expert Report Delay to Ensure Adequate Time for a Thorough Investigation of Expert Committee Member(s)’ Allegations

This week, the USDA released its draft conclusions for the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), and the cap on saturated fats look likely to stay firmly in place, . The evidence linking saturated fats to heart disease was judged to be “strong,” not only for adults, but also, for the first time, children. These were the conclusions of the Subcommittee on Dietary Fats and Seafood, part of the larger DGA Advisory Committee.

Federal dietary guidelines don’t reflect the evidence that eating fewer carbohydrates can help to reduce obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

As we deliberate about the road to reopening society and search for drugs that could improve outcomes for the coronavirus, we should not miss the opportunity to talk about the conditions that have made Americans especially vulnerable to this pandemic: our poor state of health.

In response to a new CDC report showing that 90% of COVID-19 hospitalizations in the U.S. are patients with one or more underlying conditions, today the Nutrition Coalition, a group that aims to bring rigorous science to nutrition policy, called for reforms to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans—America’s official nutrition policy—to help improve metabolic health, which could better protect at-risk Americans from viruses including COVID-19.

Do saturated fats cause heart disease? This question has once again come under consideration by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory committee (DGAC), an expert group appointed every five years to update the science for the nation’s most important nutrition policy, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA).

In March, at the last and final meeting of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC), members suggested that they’d like to lower the caps on saturated fats even further: from the current 10% of calories down to 7%—or even zero. These ideas are entirely contrary to a steadily growing consensus among top researchers over the past decade that the caps on saturated fats were never based on strong science and ought to be reconsidered.

The last two meetings of the expert committee reviewing the science for the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) have revealed many alarming problems. At a minimum, the process lacks transparency, does not use any verified methodology for reviewing the science, and excludes large numbers of rigorous studies while instead relying primarily on weak data for its conclusions.

With the obesity epidemic continuing to rise dramatically in rural communities across the country, today the Nutrition Coalition, a group that aims to bring rigorous science to nutrition policy, is urging Congress to ask U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue how the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) intends to address the epidemic in the next iteration of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) when he appears in front of the House Committee on Agriculture this week. Secretary Perdue will testify in front of the House Committee on Agriculture on Wednesday at 10:00am.

Following a two-day, DC-based workshop entitled “Saturated Fats: A Food or Nutrient Approach?” a group of leading nutrition scientists, mainly from the U.S., released a consensus statement detailing their findings on the latest research regarding the intake of saturated-fats and heart disease.

Sixty-one commenters from various industry groups, associations, and non-profits as well as a number of individuals speaking on their own behalf made oral public comments to the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) at its meeting last week.