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Connie
Weaver, distinguished
professor and head, Department of Foods and Nutrition, was
appointed to the 2005 U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee
charged with compiling science-based advice for the new
national Dietary Guidelines released in January.
The
nation's dietary guidelines are re-examined every five years
to make sure they are up to date with the latest scientific
and medical knowledge. Any government food program, such
as school lunches, must comply with the guidelines. The
committee was charged by Tommy Thompson, Secretary of Health
and Human Services, and Ann Venneman, Secretary of Agriculture,
to take a different approach from that of previous committees.Rather
than just considering how the 2000 Dietary Guidelines should
be changed, they asked this advisory committee to conduct
an evidence-based review of diet and health.
Their report was
released in fall 2004 and is available at www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2005/report.
The new guidelines, including brochures that you can download,
are available online at www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines.
"From
the start, we knew it was critical to evaluate the science
on the relationship between diet and health and base our
recommendations on solid data," Weaver says.
The
committee posed 42 questions about diet and physical activity,
which they answered based on published research. At the
end of their sessions, the committee developed 34 conclusive
statements to help guide the eating habits of Americans.
This information was then translated into nine major messages.
Weaver
was one of the authors of the Surgeon General's 2004
Report on Bone Health and Osteoporosis, and was on
the 1997 panel to help develop new calcium requirements
for the National Academy of Science. She is director of
the National Institutes of Health Botanicals Research Center
for Age Related Diseases and past president of the American
Society for Nutritional Sciences.
"Revised
Dietary Guidelines Promote Healthy Lifestyle"
(PDF) article in Food Technology, March 2005. Co-authored
by Connie Weaver and Barbara Schneeman.
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