Dietary excesses and ideals

• Dietary excesses, especially energy, certain fats, and alcohol, contribute to chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and liver disease.
• Smoking, tobacco use, and excessive alcohol consumption have more influence on health than diet.
• Diet has a powerful influence on diseases, but genetics, physical activity, and lifestyle also play a role.

Dietary Ideals

• A nutritious diet has six key characteristics: adequacy, balance, kcalorie control, nutrient density, moderation and variety.
• Adequacy means that a diet has enough energy and enough of every nutrient (as well as fiber) to meet the needs of healthy people, as addressed in the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI).
• Balance in a diet involves consuming enough, but not too much, of different types of foods in proportion to one another, so that foods rich in some nutrients do not crowd out foods rich in other nutrients.
• Meats, fish, and poultry are rich in iron but poor in calcium, while milk and milk products are rich in calcium but poor in iron; this illustrates why dietary balance is important.
• Meat or meat alternatives should be consumed for iron, milk and milk products for calcium, and some space for other foods, because a diet consisting of milk and meat alone would not be adequate.
• Whole grains, vegetables, and fruit should be consumed for other nutrients.
• Kcalorie control means that the foods provide the amount of energy needed to maintain a healthy body weight, not more or less.
• To achieve kcalorie control, select foods that deliver the most nutrients for the least food energy.
• Nutrient density means selecting foods that deliver the most nutrients for the least food energy.
• A can of cola and a handful of grapes may both provide about the same number of kcalories, but grapes deliver many more nutrients.
• Choosing nutrient-dense foods, like fruit instead of cola, supports good health and helps meet daily nutrient needs on a lower energy budget.
• Foods notably low in nutrient density, like potato chips, candy, and colas, are sometimes called empty-kcalorie foods, delivering energy from sugar, fat, or both with little or no protein, vitamins, or minerals.
• Moderation, eating foods rich in fat and sugar provide enjoyment and energy but relatively few nutrients, can lead to weight gain when eaten in excess.
• Instead, a person who practices moderation eats high-fat and high-sugar foods only on occasion and regularly selects foods low in solid fats and added sugars, a practice that automatically improves nutrient density.
• Fat-free milk offers more calcium for less energy and contains far less fat than feta cheese.
• Variety means that you should differ food choices from one day to the next.
• Individuals should select foods from each of the food groups daily and vary their choices within each food group from day to day.
• Different foods within the same group contain different arrays of nutrients; strawberries are rich in vitamin C, while apricots are rich in vitamin A, and variety improves nutrient adequacy
• Variety helps to prevent consuming foods that are guaranteed entirely free of substances that, in excess, could be harmful.

USDA Food Guide

• The USDA Food Guide is a food group plan that builds a diet from categories of foods with similar vitamin and mineral content.
• Each food group provides a set of nutrients that differs somewhat from the nutrients supplied by the other groups.
• Selecting foods from each of the groups eases the task of creating an adequate and balanced diet.
• The USDA Food Guide assigns foods to five major food groups and recommends daily amounts of foods from each group to meet nutrient needs.
• The USDA Food Guide also describes the appropriate use of oils, solid fats, and added sugars.
• The USDA Food Guide encourages greater consumption of dark green and orange vegetables, legumes, fruits, whole grains, and low-fat milk and milk products.
• The USDA Food Guide encourages reduced consumption of refined grains, total fats (especially saturated and trans fats and cholesterol), added sugars, and total kcalories.

Portion Control

• Diet planners have to learn to control food portions to manages kcalories.
• The trend in the world has been toward consuming larger food portions, especially of foods rich in fat and sugar.
• Body weights have been steadily creeping upward, suggesting an increasing need to control portion sizes.

MyPyramid

• The USDA created MyPyramid as an educational tool to illustrate the concepts in the Dietary Guidelines and the USDA Food Guide.
• The purpose of MyPyramid is to encourage people to make informed, healthy food and physical activity choices every day.

Food Labels

• Consumers are requesting more information on disease prevention and know more about the link between diet and disease.
• Food labels help consumers select foods with less saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, and sodium and more vitamins, minerals, and dietary fiber.
• Food labels appear on virtually all processed foods.
• There are posters or brochures provide similar nutrition information for fresh meats, fruits, and vegetables.
• Foods that do not need to carry nutrition labels include plain coffee, tea, and spices; foods produced by small businesses; and foods prepared and sold in the same establishment as long as the foods do not make nutrient or health claims.

Serving Sizes

• Because labels provide information per serving, they must identify the size of a service.
• The FDA requires that all labels for a product use the same service size.
• For example, ice cream serving size is 1/2 cup, and beverages are 8 fluid ounces.
• Consistent serving sizes allow consumers to comparison shop, noting the brands with the most or few kcalories or fat, for example.
• Standard serving sizes are expressed in common household measures (cups) and metric measures (milliliters).
• When you are reading a label, they must consider how the serving size compares with the quantity eaten.
• Adjust the quantities as necessary.

Daily Values

• The FDA created the Daily Values (DV) for food labels to assist consumers evaluate the information found on labels, .
• These are standards of nutrients for labels.
• Daily Values set adequacy standards for desirable nutrients like protein, vitamins, minerals, and fiber.
• Daily Values also set moderation standards for nutrients that should be limited, such as fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium.
• The "% Daily Value" (%DV) on a label shows how much a food contributes to the total diet.
• The serving contains this percentage of the recommended daily goal.
• Daily Values use a 2000-kcalorie diet, and the bottom of the label shows the Daily Values for both 2000-kcalorie and 2500-kcalorie diet.
• Due to actual energy intakes varying widely, with different people needing higher or lower kcalorie counts, Daily Values are most useful for comparing foods than for planning individual nutrient intake.
• Analyzing a food's overall nutrient profile, you can determine a food contributes "a little" or "a lot" of a nutrient, more or less than another food, and how well it fits into your overall diet.
• The FDA requires the “Nutrition Facts” panel on a label to include nutrient information in quantities (grams) and percentages of the Daily Values besides serving size and the servings per container.
• The Nutrition Facts panel must provide the nutrient amount, percent Daily Value, or both for the following: total food energy (kcalories), food energy from fat (kcalories), total fat (grams and percent Daily Value), saturated fat (grams and percent Daily Value), trans fat (grams), cholesterol (milligrams and percent Daily Value), and sodium (milligrams and percent Daily Value).
• The labels must also present nutrient content information as a percentage of the Daily Values for vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, and calcium

Nutrient Claims

• What is considered "free" or "high" is defined by the FDA, and put on product labels to describe contents.
• The FDA defines the conditions under which each term can be used.
• A "cholesterol-free" product must have defined requirements of less than 2 milligrams of cholesterol and not more than 2 grams of saturated fat and trans fat combined per serving.
• Implied claims that a food contains or does not contain a nutrient are not allowed if they don't meet certain criteria.
• A "contains no oil" claim implies that the food contains no fat, yet if it contains butter, the claim may not be on the product.

Health Claims

• Before allowing health claims on food labels, the FDA held manufacturers to the strictest standards of scientific proof.
• When a label states that "diets low in sodium may reduce the risk of high blood pressure," the FDA has examined ample data and discovered significant evidence for the claim.
• These reliable health claims make up the FDA's "A" list.
• Health claims include calcium and reduced risk of osteoporosis.
• Sodium and reduced risk of hypertension.
• Dietary saturated fat and cholesterol and reduced risk of coronary heart disease.
• Dietary fat and reduced risk of cancer.
• Fiber-containing grain products, fruits, and vegetables and reduced risk of cancer.
• Fruits, vegetables, and grain products that contain fiber, particularly soluble fiber, and reduced risk of coronary heart disease.
• Fruits and vegetables and reduced risk of cancer.
• Folate and reduced risk of neural tube defects.
• Sugar alcohols and reduced risk of tooth decay.
• Soluble fiber from whole oats and from psyllium seed husk and reduced risk of heart disease.
• Soy protein and reduced risk of heart disease.
• Whole grains and reduced risk of heart disease and certain cancers.
• Plant sterol and plant stanol esters and reduced risk of heart disease.
• Potassium and reduced risk of hypertension and stroke.

Structure-Function Claims

• There may be "structure-function" claims on food and dietary supplement labels, and the consumer has to be aware of the differences.
• They indicate a food's effect on the body such as "antioxidants support heart health".
• They do not require FDA approval and cannot mention any reduction in disease risk nor must mention a specific disease.
• The FDA has to provide a more specific claim such as "prevents osteoporosis" to meet the even stricter safety and efficacy standards applied to drugs, and therefore the requirements must be rigorous and proven.
• To ensure a health claim is real, it needs to name a specific disease and the food, while in a healthy diet, may assist in the agreement and protect against the disease.