Nutrition panel urges Americans to eat green

Americans should consider the health of the planet along with the health of their hearts when deciding what to eat, according to an expert panel that advises the federal government on nutrition.

It is the first time the advisory committee, which updates its recommendations in a report every five years, has considered the environmental impact of food choices.

Also for the first time, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee singled out "added sugars" -- those not naturally found in foods such as fruit --encouraging Americans to sharply cut back.

Rather than obsess over individual ingredients, the report urges Americans to think about healthy dietary patterns, with more fruits, nuts, legumes, vegetables and whole grains, and less red or processed meat. That type of diet is linked to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. Plant-based diets also use fewer resources, such as land, water and energy, and produce fewer greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the atmosphere and contribute to climate change. Vegetables also are less likely than livestock to pollute the land, according to the report, issued Thursday.

"We need to think about a sustainable diet that's supportable and accessible for generations to come," says committee member Miriam Nelson, a professor of nutrition at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. "A sustainable diet is also a very healthy diet."

The report encourages people to consume fish, for example, but to choose kinds that are harvested in ways that avoid "overfishing," or wiping out a region's entire supply of a particular species. Although some health advocates are concerned about the risk of mercury contamination from fish, the report finds that the benefits of fish oils for the heart and brain outweigh those concerns.

Registered dietitian Bonnie Taub-Dix says it makes sense to move meat from a "starring role" as the main dish to side dish or "accent."

"It's not only healthier, but it's more economical," says Taub-Dix, author of Read It Before Your Eat It.

The committee's scientific report will be used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services to write the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, scheduled to be released by the end of the year.

The federal government uses those guidelines to plan menus for the National School Lunch Program and when developing nutrition programs for the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, which provides food vouchers for low-income families.

Government food policies are important because diseases such as obesity and diabetes disproportionately affect poor people, says committee member Lucile Adams-Campbell,associate director for minority health and health disparities research at the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington.

The report notes that 49 million Americans, including 9 million children, live with "food insecurity," meaning they don't have a stable source of nutritious, affordable food.

Poor nutrition is a critical concern for Americans of all incomes, the report says.

About half of American adults, or 117 million people, have one or more health problems linked to poor diet and lack of exercise, such as heart disease, obesity, cancer or type 2 diabetes, according to the report. About two-thirds of adults and nearly one-third of children are obese.

The report calls on the nation to shift toward preventing health problems rather than treating them after they develop, says committee member Barbara Millen, a registered dietitian with Millennium Prevention in Massachusetts.

Most Americans eat too much saturated fat, sodium and refined sugars, and many fall short of particular nutrients, such as vitamin D, fiber, potassium and calcium.

Taub-Dix, who was not involved with the report, praised its emphasis on healthier options.

"People often say, 'Just tell me which foods are good and which foods are bad,'" Taub-Dix says. "Instead of focusing on everything you should cut back on and everything you should be avoiding, it's really about replacing."

Taub-Dix says she tries to decrease saturated fat and increase vegetables in her recipes.

"I love to make turkey burgers for my family, but half of it is chopped vegetables and chopped mushrooms," Taub-Dix says. "You're still getting the taste of meat, but you're also putting things in there that you don't normally get enough of."

The report's emphasis on the environment has drawn mixed reviews. The committee notes that other countries, such as Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Brazil, have factored the environment into their dietary recommendations for many years.

But Joanne Slavin, a registered dietitian who served on the advisory committee in 2010, notes that there were no experts on food's environmental impact on the latest panel.

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association says disputes the idea that people should eat less red meat. The committee's recommendations on the environment should be rejected, the group says, because they're outside the nutritional panel's areas of expertise.

"It is absurd for the advisory committee to suggest that Americans should eat less red meat and focus so heavily on plant-based diets," says Richard Thorpe, a physician who is a spokesman for the group. "The American diet is already 70% plant-based. ... The advisory committee got it wrong in the '80s advising a diet high in carbs, and look at what that got us – an obesity problem. My colleagues and I commonly encourage people to include lean beef more often for their health, not less."

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which endorses a vegan diet with no animal products, applauded the committee's recommendations. Neil Barnard, the group's president and founder, says the report "breaks new ground in reporting on food's relationship to environmental health."

Cameron Wells, a registered dietitian with the physicians committee, says the country needs to put the report's recommendations into practice. "We need to make reaching for carrot sticks, apple slices, bean burritos and leafy green salads the norm, whether it's in school lunch rooms or at the local food market," she says.

The advisory committee recommended that Americans get less than 10% of their daily calories from added sugar. Americans today get about 16% of their daily calories from added sugars, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

According to the new guidelines, people following a 2,000-calorie diet should consume no more than 50 grams of added sugar a day, Taub-Dix says. A 12-ounce can of Coke, for example, contains 35 grams of sugar.

The FDA has proposed changing food labels to list added sugars. The current label lists total sugar, a combination of added and natural sugar.

Taub-Dix praised the idea of listing added sugars. The 12 grams of sugar in milk is so different than the sugar in soda," she says, because milk has so many other nutritional benefits.

The report made some recommendations about specific nutrients and foods:

Cholesterol. The 2010 dietary recommendations told Americans to get no more than 300 milligrams of cholesterol a day from food. Studies have shown that few Americans exceed that limit, says committee member Marian Neuhouser, a nutritional epidemiologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

The new report says there's no need to avoid high-cholesterol foods, such as eggs, because dietary sources don't really affect the amount of cholesterol in the blood, which is what doctors measure in standard cholesterol tests. Only about 20% of a person's blood cholesterol comes from diet.

The new advice overturns decades of nutritional advice, including federal recommendations, that caused millions of Americans to eat fewer eggs.

The report doesn't change health recommendations to maintain healthy levels of blood cholesterol. High levels of LDL -- the "bad" cholesterol -- are linked to a greater risk of heart attacks.

Saturated fat. People should get less than 10% of total calories from saturated fat daily, the report says. That's about 22 grams of saturated fat a day, Taub-Dix says. "If you look at a doughnut, that could have more than 22 grams of fat," she says.

People can reduce saturated fat by choosing low-fat or skim milk; using vegetable oils instead of animal fats such as butter; and getting protein from legumes, such as black beans, rather than meat.

Coffee. Strong evidence shows that healthy people can drink up to three to five cups of coffee a day without any health risks, the report says. Drinking coffee may even reduce the risk of diabetes and heart disease, and possibly Parkinson's disease. The committee says children should avoid high-caffeine energy drinks, however.

Aspartame. This artificial sweetener, sold as NutraSweet and Equal and included in diet sodas and other products, appears safe at the levels normally consumed, although there's "some uncertainty" about an increased risk of blood cancers in men, the report says.

Using aspartame in a healthy food like yogurt could help people cut down on added sugar, Taub-Dix says. The report notes that water is a healthier option than diet soda.

Sodium. Americans should consume less than 2,300 milligrams a day of sodium, which contributes to high blood pressure, the report says. People can reduce their sodium intake by eating less processed food, Taub-Dix says. She notes that about 75% of salt in the diet comes from restaurant meals, not home-cooked food. "The sodium recommendations are not actually new," Taub-Dix says. "What would be news is if anyone could comply with it."