Final 2015-20 Dietary Guidelines for Americans

The 1990 National Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research Act requires the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to jointly publish the Dietary Guidelines for Americans at least once every five years. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans: 2015-2020, eighth edition, was released on January 7, 2016. The guidelines were heavily informed by the Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC), which was charged with analyzing the latest in nutrition science since the 2010 guidelines were published and coming up with food-based recommendations of public health importance. The secretaries of HHS and the USDA were under no obligation to accept every DGAC recommendation, and, in particular, they pointedly rejected its suggestion that the guidelines should recommend that Americans pay more attention to the "sustainability" of the food they eat.