Authors: United States Department of Health and Human Services United States Department of Agriculture

Publication Year: 2024

Keywords: Culturally Informed Care, Diabetes, Health Care Access, Social Determinants of Health (SDOH), Traditional Healing, Traditional Foods, Nutrition, Diet

Abstract:
The Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Agriculture (USDA) established the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (Committee) to examine scientific evidence on specific nutrition and public health topics and provide independent, science-based advice and recommendations to be considered by the Departments in the development of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030. HHS and USDA identified topics and scientific questions to potentially be examined by the 2025 Committee and posted them for public comment before establishing the Committee. After the Committee was appointed, it considered the proposed questions and determined if questions should be added, refined, or removed as it prioritized questions for its review. The Committee used the criteria of relevance, importance, potential impact to federal programs, avoiding duplication, and research availability during its prioritization process. The Committee used 3 approaches to examine the evidence: data analysis, systematic reviews, and food pattern modeling. Each of these approaches has its own rigorous, protocol driven methodology, and each played a complementary role in examining the science. The type of information the Committee needed to answer each scientific question determined which approach it would use to review the evidence.

The Committee’s report is particularly notable for its intentional focus on health equity, which it defined as the state in which everyone has a fair and just opportunity to attain their highest level of health. Specifically, the Committee was tasked with examining the relationship between diet and health across all life stages using a health equity lens, ensuring that the implications of factors such as socioeconomic position, race, ethnicity, and culture were described and considered to the greatest extent possible for each scientific question and based on the information available in the scientific literature and data. A primary goal of centering health equity is to help HHS and USDA ensure that the resulting guidance in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (Dietary Guidelines) is relevant to people of diverse racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds, thereby increasing the potential of the guidance to meet nutrient needs, promote health, and reduce risk of chronic disease.

The Committee considered health equity as a guiding principle as it examined the evidence. From protocol development to evidence integration, the Committee worked to ensure that factors such as socioeconomic position, race, ethnicity, and culture were considered to the greatest extent possible based on the available evidence. For example, the Committee conducted an evidence scan on culturally tailored dietary interventions to describe the available evidence and make recommendations regarding future systematic review efforts to continue work on this important topic. As a second example, the Committee’s data analysis efforts included a granular look at how dietary intakes and prevalence of chronic diseases vary among sociodemographic groups. As a third example, the Committee was the first Committee to use diet simulations—a systems science approach—to evaluate proposed dietary patterns, considering variability in the selection and consumption of foods and beverages representing differing preferences, cultures, and traditions.

The Committee’s report also leverages advancements in the methods used to examine the evidence. The Committee established synthesis plans in each of its systematic review protocols, and answered select scientific questions using systematic review with meta-analysis. In addition, all systematic reviews and food pattern modeling reports underwent external peer review in an effort to further align with recommendations from a National Academies report. The Committee addressed a broad range of important diet- and health-related questions, building on the work of previous Committees and expanding their reviews to new topics. The Committee addressed new topics, including food sources of saturated fat consumed and risk of CVD; dietary patterns with varying amounts of ultra-proceeded foods; strategies for improving diet quality and weight management, which involved new reviews on portion size and frequency of meals and/or snacking; and practical guidance about how to feed younger children in terms of caregiver feeding styles and practices that support children’s consumption of healthy foods

See NCUIH's Policy Blog post about this report here: https://ncuih.org/2025/01/08/scientific-report-of-the-2025-dietary-guidelines-advisory-committee-discusses-importance-of-foods-and-beverages-integral-to-american-indian-and-alaska-native-people/

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Type of Resource: Reports