Editorial: Dietary guidelines don’t matter

Remember the food pyramid you were shown in elementary school? Did you ever follow it?

The dietary guidelines advisory committee’s report to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services recommend that the 2005 dietary guidelines should change.

The report includes changes in the areas of total calorie consumption per day and the percentage of recommended carbohydrates. We’re not too worried. The new guidelines and food pyramid don’t seem likely to make a difference in the country’s overall health.

Even the committee itself recognized that “there’s a big disconnect between dietary recommendations and what Americans actually eat.”

But it also seems important to note that these are just guidelines. Trying to create a roadmap for how all the diverse people in the country should eat is basically impossible. For example, vegans have to ignore the meat and dairy portions of the food pyramid, and those that are gluten intolerant must ignore much of the carbohydrates portion. If you’re looking to lose weight, you probably shouldn’t eat the allowed total consumption of 3,000 calories per day for men. If you’re a college student, you probably shouldn’t restrict yourself to the 1,600 minimum calorie intake per day recommended for women. After all, that’s only a few beers.

Because it’s so hard to make a food pyramid and guidelines that can fit everyone, it would be more beneficial to have individualized dietary guidelines. Whether these would be determined by one’s doctor or generated online by a government site, individualized dietary guidelines would be more suitable for combating the country’s health problems by catering to people’s specific characteristics and needs.