Food Science Challenge: Translating the Dietary Guidelines for Americans to Bring About Real Behavior Change

Sylvia Rowe,Nelson Almeida,Penny Kris‐Etherton,Connie Weaver,Laina Bush,Nancy Keim,Robbie Burns,Patricia Crawford,Nick Alexander,Richard Black

doi:10.1111/j.1750-3841.2010.01973.x

Abstract

Food scientists and nutrition scientists (dietitians and nutrition communicators) are tasked with creating strategies to more closely align the American food supply and the public's diet with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). This paper is the result of 2 expert dialogues to address this mandate, which were held in Chicago, Illinois, and Washington, D.C., in early October 2010 between these 2 key scientific audiences. It is an objective that has largely eluded public health experts over the past several decades. This document takes the perspective of food scientists who are tasked with making positive modifications to the food supply, both in innovating and reformulating food products, to respond to both the DGA recommendations, and to consumer desires, needs, and choices. The paper is one of two to emerge from those October 2010 discussions; the other article focuses on the work of dietitians and nutrition communicators in effecting positive dietary change.

Highlights

Food scientists and nutrition scientists are tasked with creating strategies to more closely align the American food supply and the public’s diet with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA)
The 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) report offers a new approach to making dietary recommendations and sounds a new note of urgency: the 2010 DGA are the first to call for a modification of the food environment and there is a new chapter on “translating and integrating the evidence, a call to action.”
As should be clear after 6 DGA reports in the past 3 decades, dietary change is not easy to achieve. It requires 2 key components to succeed: (1) food scientists working within industry or in academia need to reformulate product offerings or create new food products to help balance food choices available to consumers, and (2) consumers need to be truly motivated by nutrition science around human health

Summary

Setting the Stage

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) were first formally introduced to the public in 1980, in an attempt to give consumers the science-based nutrition recommendations they need to build a healthy diet and prevent diet-related chronic disease. As should be clear after 6 DGA reports in the past 3 decades, dietary change is not easy to achieve It requires 2 key components to succeed: (1) food scientists working within industry or in academia need to reformulate product offerings or create new food products to help balance food choices available to consumers, and (2) consumers need to be truly motivated by nutrition science around human health. These concepts are similar to a push/pull scenario: industry creates the push by developing foods in line with the DGA and consumers pull by demanding healthier foods or, alternatively, by adopting new behaviors that will drive innovation and product reformulation. After so many years of concerted efforts to guide the public to dietary behavior in line with recommendations supported by a growing body of scientific evidence, how do we proceed at this point? In its “call to action,” the DGAC offers an explicit prescription on how we are to proceed:

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Findings

Strategic Priorities