December 2024, the expert committee’s Scientific Report on the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines, slated for publication later this year by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services (USDA-HHS), was published for review.
The next step will be for the USDA-HHS Secretaries appointed by the new administration to write the new Guidelines based on this report. However, the Secretaries have the liberty to approve or reject its recommendations based not only on the report but also on the feedback they receive. An important part of this process includes reviewing public comments. The 60-day public comment period opened on December 11, 2024, and closes on February 10, 2025.
To Submit a Comment on Dietary Guidelines
The following submitted comment is solely the opinion of Holistic Nutrition for the Whole You
In my 20-plus years as a clinician and nutrition educator in predominantly rural populations, the evidence has clearly supported a flexible whole-food diet for health, cognitive elasticity, and sustainable longevity. A lifestyle and wellness approach that includes a wide selection of animal and plant protein from healthy sources and a diversity of nutrient-dense vegetables and fruits.
America depends heavily on companies outside our borders to provide foundational foods such as meat and produce. While this practice provides instant gratification to consumers, it also significantly increases the risk of foodborne illness, toxin contamination, and environmental pollution, elevating the cost of the most beneficial foods out of the reach of the disenfranchised and high-risk populations.
American industrial refined foods, heavy in harmful fats from soy, canola, corn, cottonseed and others, along with highly refined carbohydrates from sugar beet, soy, corn, wheat and rice – have been solidly linked in research to all-cause mortality, including diabetes, which has supplanted cardiovascular disease as a leading cause of death. Historically, the poor and underserved populations had greater access to whole fresh foods; a review of nursing texts and nutrition books from the 1930s-1970s supports this comment. Most of these populations now depend on high-calorie, refined, low-nutrition industrial foods and limp produce available in franchise outlets and small mini-mart stores. Industrially processed foods have a devastating impact on health, which impacts the economy, medical costs, productivity, and academic excellence. Industrial food manufacturers and marketers dehumanize those most in need of quality nutrition: the poor, children, elderly, pregnant mothers, and students.
I encourage you to reflect on the original dietary guidelines published in 1942 and the basic nutrition education information provided in cookbooks and school programs from 1930 to the 1970s before mass-produced foods replaced local, fresh, and sustainable foods. Returning to an objective whole-food-centered approach, like in Europe and Asia, includes saturated fats from plants and animals and is supported by evidence-informed science. Whole Food Nourishment is key to actively making the nation, once more, capable of greatness. Historical documents confirm that tyrannical regimes routinely used starvation and poor food quality as a means of suppressing populations.
Big food lobbyists promote profit over health, ease and convenience over sustainability, and homogeneity over cultural and regional diversity. They do not campaign for economic stability for the underserved or improved IQs in children, reduced medical costs, or wellness lifestyle endorsements. Big Business and politicized agendas have no place at the wellness table, which empowers individuals to achieve greatness.
To Sustainable Wellness for all Americas