Remember back to this past summer of 2010 when the HHS department and the USDA released new dietary recommendations? Well those recommendations came from a committee that was assembled to revise the 2005 Dietary Guidelines after looking at new nutrition research and the health of our country. You can find those recommendations here.
So now those recommendations from June of 2010 have been turned into the detailed Dietary Guidelines of 2010, which were released today. Basically, the guidelines give you very specific and easy to follow nutrition action items that will help improve your health.
They are broken up into five categories: balancing calories to manage weight; foods and food components to reduce; foods and nutrients to increase; building healthy eating patterns; helping Americans make healthy choices. The new food pyramid to accompany these new and updated guidelines will soon follow in a few months.
So how do these guidelines affect those of you with diabetes? Can you still follow the guidelines along with your diabetes meal plan?
The answer is yes, these guidelines are great suggestions for you if you have diabetes. The one thing to keep in mind though, is that your diabetes meal plan or instructions from your health care team are personalized for you and your treatment plan. So, if you have a specific meal plan, you should follow those instructions over a guideline that seems to contradict your treatment plan. But the 2010 guidelines will most likely go hand in hand with your treatment plan.
