Designing a sustainable diet
Sustainability as dietary guidance created political debate
Abstract
In the United States, a vigorous debate is under way over government-issued dietary guidance. A February 2015 report by the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) recommended, for the first time, that food system sustainability be an integral part of dietary guidance in the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) (1). With the final decision from the secretaries of Health and Human Services (HHS) and of Agriculture (USDA) about what parts of the DGAC recommendations to include in the 2015 DGAs expected at the end of this year, we discuss the need to incorporate sustainability into dietary guidelines and the political maneuvering under way to excise it.
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References and Notes
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Knotter H., How to sustain sound dietary guidelines for Americans: Mission creep within the federal Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee threatens Americans' health and well-being (Hudson Institute, Washington, DC, 2014).
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Published In
Science
Volume 350 | Issue 6257
9 October 2015
9 October 2015
Copyright
Copyright © 2015, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Published in print: 9 October 2015
Acknowledgments
The commentary grew out of a November 2014 symposium on sustainability and dietary guidance supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Grace Communications Foundation.
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