Every five years the USDA and HHS release updated dietary guidelines for Americans, and the latest version, Dietary Guidelines 2015-2020, just landed last week. According to the Executive Summary, the new guidelines represent a shift in philosophy:

Previous editions of the Dietary Guidelines focused primarily on individual dietary components such as food groups and nutrients. However, people do not eat food groups and nutrients in isolation but rather in combination, and the totality of the diet forms an overall eating pattern.

As a result, eating patterns and their food and nutrient characteristics are a focus of the recommendations in the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines.

The good thing about this move is that it (theoretically) shifts us away from inscrutable nutrient-talk. “Increase your ratio of unsaturated fat” or “eat nutrient-dense food” is food advice that only a nutrition professional could love.  Ditching the nutrient jargon should make the guidelines much more user-friendly.

But the new focus on “eating patterns” has its own pitfalls. The document’s five core Guidelines focus on eating patterns but are so vague that they verge on vapid: “#1: Follow a healthy eating pattern across the lifespan; #3: Shift to healthier food and beverage choices. #5: Support healthy eating patterns for all.”  So the USDA’s healthy eating advice is to eat healthier food. Got it…. Thankfully, the document’s Key Recommendations put a little more meat on the bones of the core Guidelines:

A healthy eating pattern includes:^[1]

• A variety of vegetables from all of the subgroups—dark green, red and orange, legumes (beans and peas), starchy, and other
• Fruits, especially whole fruits
• Grains, at least half of which are whole grains
• Fat-free or low-fat dairy, including milk, yogurt, cheese, and/or fortified soy beverages
• A variety of protein foods, including seafood, lean meats and poultry, eggs, legumes (beans and peas), and nuts, seeds, and soy products
• Oils

A healthy eating pattern limits:

• Saturated fats and trans fats, added sugars, and sodium

Hey, there’s some usable information in there! Notice that it’s the emphasis on foods – not mysterious nutrients or amorphous “eating patterns” – that makes this section at least partially usable for the lay reader.

But nutrition guru Marion Nestle points out a striking pattern in these recommendations: the Guidelines focus on foods when they suggest “eat more.”  But they revert to nutrient-talk when they suggest “eat less.” So “eat less saturated fat” serves as a euphemism for “eat less meat.” And “consume less sugar” replaces “drink less soda.”

Why the reversion to jargon when it comes to cutting out bad stuff? This is the political influence of food lobbyists at work. While a panel of scientific experts formulates findings and passes them on to the USDA, the USDA’s Guidelines are ultimately subject to extensive feedback and commentary from the public – chiefly the food industry that pours millions of dollars into lobbying efforts to shape the Guidelines. Here the USDA and HHS are subject to what political scientists call “regulatory capture.” Vox notes that this process can severely distort the government’s dietary advice:

Back in the 1980s, for instance, scientists were finding that saturated fats could be harmful to the body. Meat is a key source of saturated fat. But the meat industry didn’t want the government telling people to cut back. So after much lobbying, the official dietary guidelines settled on the message that we should all “eat less fat.” That actually distorted the science, since unsaturated fats are perfectly fine — and the sugar-laden, low-fat craze that followed turned out to be a disaster for public health.

So despite the Guidelines’ self-proclaimed move toward user-friendliness, the new Guidelines fall into two major traps. On one hand they aim for lofty and non-specific goals about forging new “eating patterns.” On the other hand, under pressure from industry they fall into the old trap of micro-targeting nutrients in a way that is likely to be perplexing to the average American. The right course is intermediate between these two pitfalls –  dietary guidelines should center squarely on the foods that people know and consume every day.