USDA and Sparkpeople Agree: Calories Count!
SparkPeople Welcomes the New Dietary Guidelines
-- By Mike Kramer, SparkPeople Contributor
Bet you never thought you’d see the day when the federal government was the hallmark of clarity and common sense. But it just happened.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) just released the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005. The common sense findings of the Guidelines (and SparkPeople wholeheartedly agrees) place emphasis right where it belongs – on calories. In the mad, mad, mad, mad world of weight loss, it’s a breath of fresh air.
Nobody does more research to get to the truth of nutrition and healthy living than HHS. Nobody. No other research organization dedicates as many man-hours and resources solely to learn which nutritional tactics really work and which are better suited for the fiction aisle. And even for these research masterminds, the Guidelines were a challenge. According to Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman, "The process we used to develop these recommendations was more rigorous and more transparent than ever before."
So when the scientific method and common sense fuse together in the laboratory, it’s a good reason to sit up and take notice. Here’s what their research found and what is actually kind of exciting: Balancing nutrients is not enough for health. Calories also count.
