Make Every Bite Count For A Healthy Life
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By Pamela Redwine
County Coordinator
MSU Extension Agent III
The recently released 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) encourage us to “Make Every Bite Count” for a healthy life, both now and as we age. The DGA is jointly published by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS) every five years to provide science-based recommendations for healthy eating patterns for Americans from birth through older adults.
Why “Make Every Bite Count?”
What we eat has an important impact on our health, yet our daily food choices don’t reflect the science around nutrition and health.
The Healthy Eating Index (HEI) measures how closely Americans’ food and beverage choices follow the DGA recommendations. Based on the HEI, Americans earn a failing grade in food choices, which means that we’re missing out on a golden opportunity to improve our health not only today, but also as we age.
The science is clear that diet-related chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, liver disease, and some types of cancer, are major public health problems. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, and major risk factors like high blood pressure and high LDL and total cholesterol are strongly implicated in heart disease and stroke.
About 74 percent of American adults are overweight or obese, and about 40 percent of children and adolescents in the United States are overweight or obese. Unfortunately, the rate of obesity tends to increase with age. Obesity is strongly related to chronic disease, with higher rates of heart disease in people who are obese. Almost 90 percent of adults with diabetes are also overweight or obese.
Making every bite count by following the DGA plays a major role in reducing chronic disease and enabling people to lead a healthier, active life.
Currently, we fall short in these key areas:
• 75 percent of people don’t eat enough vegetables, fruit and dairy products.
• 63 percent consume too much added sugar.
• 77 percent consume too much saturated fat.
• 90 percent consume too much sodium.
How much saturated fat, added sugar, and sodium is too much?
The DGA recommend these limits:
• Less than 10 percent of calories from added sugars starting at age 2 years.
• From birth until age 2, the new recommendation is to avoid added sugars completely.
• Less than 10 percent of calories from saturated fat starting at age 2 years.
• No more than 2300mg of sodium per day.
Article source: https://foodandhealth.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/minutes-agendas-newsletters/Newsletter_2021-03-01.pdf
Extension Notes
The pickup date for February 4-H Cooking Kits has been rescheduled for Thursday, February 25, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Extension Office. (We will send email to confirm this by Wednesday based on availability of supplies at available at the grocery store).
The 4-H S.A.F.E.T.Y Interest Meeting has been rescheduled for Saturday, February 27, at 10 a.m. at the Multi-Purpose Building in Coffeeville. The required Safety Training will be held on Saturday, March 6 at 10 a.m. The 4-H S.A.F.E.T.Y program is Safe Archery & Firearms Education and Training for Youth. Formerly known as the shooting sports program, kids learn the life skills needed to compete in shooting sports activities such as archery, pellet rifles, pellet pistols, shotguns, 22 rifles and 22 pistols.
The Looped with Love Crochet MHV Club will meet on Thursday, March 4, at 10 a.m. at the Extension office. We hope you will join us – remember to bring your yarn and crochet hood. Please wear your masks and practice social distancing while inside the Extension Office.
The ServSafe Food Safety Online Exam will be offered on Wednesday, March 17, at the Extension Office. For pricing and exam times available please contact the Extension Office. ServSafe Food Safety Course and Exam will also be offered on March 30 and 31st in Pittsboro at the Calhoun County Extension Office. For more information or to register for this class contact me at 675-2730 or p.redwine@msstate.edu.
Northeast Family & Consumer Science (FCS) Minute is streamed on Facebook each Tuesday. Make sure to hoin the FCS Agents of Northeast Mississippi each Tuesday as we present NE FCS Minute, a new educational video series about a variety of topics. Each week a different agent posts a 60 second video. The segments are shared on your local extension Facebook page which is Yalobusha County Extension Office.
MSU Extension will provide accommodations to persons with disabilities or special needs. Please contact our office prior to a program or event to request reasonable accommodations.
