We’re getting more reaction to the new federal nutrition guidelines released last week. Dr. Oren Rom, the senior associate dean of basic and translational science at LSU Health Shreveport, says his big takeaway from the new guidelines is how simple they are, going from 164 pages five years ago to ten pages. He says for the most part, the recommendations are not much different from the old recommendations, although he would have liked to have seen a higher recommendation for daily vegetable servings.
“In a diet that has 2,000 calories a day, about 3 servings a day, I would actually recommend higher; go up to 5 servings a day, but some people has difficult to achieve that,” Rom said.
Among other things, the new guidelines place a strong emphasis on protein, including protein contained in red meat. Nutritionists point out that certain cuts of red meat can contain a lot of saturated fat, which can cause cardiovascular disease. But Dr. Rom says a deep examination of the new food pyramid shows no change in the fat content recommendation.
“You see the same limits that we had in the prior guidelines, limiting the total intake for a saturated fat to 10% of your total energy intake a day,” Rom noted.
Rom says the new guidelines also delve into how the food is prepared.
“If you limit deep fried food and prefer baking or grilling, that will give you a lot of benefits as well,” Rom suggested.