Food Based Dietary Guidelines and accompanying Visual Dietary Guidelines

Abstract

National Food Based Dietary Guidelines (FBDG, simply - dietary guidelines) are intended to establish a basis for public nutrition, food, health and agricultural policies and nutrition education programs to foster healthy eating habits and lifestyle. Generally, they advocate combination of food groups and dietary patterns to provide the required nutrients to promote overall health, prevent chronic diseases, and lessen the environmental burden of food production. Dietary guidelines are developed and/or influenced by interdisciplinary teams of experts, comprising representatives of agriculture, health, education, nutrition and food science, consumers, non-governmental organizations, the food industry, communications, and anthropology. Many sources of information are reviewed in this process, such as scientific evidence of the relationship between diet, nutrition and health, and data on food production, food consumption, food composition, cost, accessibility, and environmental impact. The last 40+ years have seen an extraordinary flood of nutrition research and information which in turn influenced the content of these FBDGs as knowledge progressed. While reflecting this evolution and inevitably having some shortcomings, overall FBDG have been and will remain a major influence on healthier eating habits and lifestyle, on what society believes as being healthy diet patterns, on food production and distribution, and on government food, nutrition, and environmental legislation.