Dietary Guidelines Need More Food Science
posted on June 9, 2009
The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee needs more food scientists and their wisdom, said Fergus Clydesdale, Professor, Univ. of Massachusetts, and a member of the 2005 advisory committee. “Unfortunately, food science has been relegated to only food safety—the committee needs a new charge,” said Clydesdale, who was part of the panel discussion (Session 092) on The Evolution of Dietary Guidance: Lessons Learned and New Frontiers.
“Food technology is not a pejorative term; the dietary guidelines should recommend foods that people actually eat like canned and frozen fruits and vegetables,” said Clydesdale. “It takes about 21 days for produce to get from the field to the supermarket; the product undergoes a lot of degradation. On the other hand, produce goes from the field to freezing in only 18 hours. I think it would be a revelation for many committee members that the food industry produces the food we eat. “
Connie Weaver, Head of Food Science and Nutrition, Purdue Univ., and a member of the 2005 advisory committee, spoke about Maximizing Nutrients of Concern in the Food Supply. She discussed how the 2005 committee came to the conclusion that consumers needed to increase their intake of fruits and vegetables as a primary way to meet nutrient adequacy without exceeding energy/calorie needs. “The recommendations we made were a lot more prescriptive and specific,” said Weaver. “For example, we looked at fruit juice versus whole fruit.” The committee went beyond the 5-a-day recommendation for fruits and vegetables and promoted dark green leafy and colorful vegetables. Grains and cereals were amended to be half from whole grains. The amount of dairy was increased from 2 cups per day to 3 cups per day to meet the dietary reference intake (DRI) for potassium.
This true that consumers needs food with higher amount of dietary fiber, particularly, soluble dietary fiber which forms active Gel, which provides most health benefits like; increasing satiety value of food, lowering Glycemic Index (GI)of food, colon cleaning, imparting regularity, lowering cholestrol and blood sugar. But we find that lots of food contains dietary fiber like Inulene, Wheat dextrin etc which does not form active Gel, but they do show presence of dietary fiber on Nutrition Fact data. This is misleading to consumers. Consumer thinks that by consuming this food he/she would get benefit of dietary fiber, but in reality it is not true. National Fiber Council also published these data on their web site. There should be regulation by which it should be allowed to publish data of ingredient which are active for particular health benefits. Then consumers will be truly get benefits.