choosemyplate.gov

March is National Nutrition Month. Throughout the month, USDA will be highlighting results of our efforts to improve access to safe, healthy food for all Americans and supporting the health of our next generation.

Knowing what and how much to eat can be complicated. And in today’s quick-paced society, Americans are looking for modern, on-the-go solutions for all aspects of our lives, including personal nutrition. USDA offers a variety of online tools, available on desktop, tablet, and mobile, to help you plan a healthy diet and see how you’re doing over time.

SuperTracker is a free food, physical activity, and weight tracking tool. It provides nutrition recommendations based on the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans that are personalized for your specific needs. You can track your foods to see how your choices stack up and quickly identify small changes for improvement. SuperTracker can help you build your own healthy eating style through interactive tracking. The Food Tracker feature offers an at-a-glance view of your dietary intake, including the five MyPlate food groups, calories, added sugars, saturated fat, and sodium.

Today, we are delighted to announce the release of the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

We know that a lifetime of healthy eating helps to prevent chronic diseases like obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, and Type 2 diabetes. The Dietary Guidelines provides a clear path for the general public, as well as policy makers and health professionals and others who reach the public, to help Americans make healthy choices, informed by a thoughtful, critical, and transparent review of the scientific evidence on nutrition.

Obesity and other chronic diseases come not only with increased health risks, but also at a high cost. Healthy eating is one of the most powerful tools we have to reduce the onset of disease.

Looking for a way to stretch your food dollars?  Would an extra $30 per month for each person in your household help?  That’s about $370 per person per year, or almost $1,500 for a family of four.  That’s the amount of money USDA estimates the average American spends on food that’s not eaten.  It is the equivalent of approximately 2 months’ worth of groceries in a year. 

Reducing food loss and waste is an important part of maximizing household budgets. USDA has initiated a number of projects to help consumers reduce wasted food and improve overall nutrition.  Most recently, USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP) launched a new section on ChooseMyPlate.gov to raise awareness about how much edible food is wasted nationwide, along with a range of resources supporting food waste reduction efforts, including a new infographic titled “Let’s Talk Trash.” There are also tips on ways to reduce food waste at home.

Just in time for the 2015 White House Conference on Aging, the USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion and National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health,  are co-publishing a new resource, “Choosing Healthy Meals as You Get Older: 10 Healthy Eating Tips for People Age 65+” to provide practical advice about enjoying healthy meals no matter what your age. Our bodies change through our 60s, 70s, 80s, and beyond and making healthy food choices is a smart thing to do at any age!

As you get older, food is the best way to get nutrients you need.  It’s important to find sensible, flexible ways to choose and prepare tasty meals. Eating is more enjoyable when you are with others, so try to make your meals a social event.  There are many ways to make mealtimes pleasing.

It is an exciting time for kids to get creative with nutrition! Last week, the top kid chefs from the 2015 Healthy Lunchtime Challenge were announced, and students across the country are Cooking up Change and getting connected to school food. The CheckOut MyPlate Video Search provided another opportunity for kids to showcase their creative thoughts and ideas about food and health.  

The video search was created and implemented by a group of MyPlate National Strategic Partners to help educate and empower children to take healthy eating and physical activity into their own hands and bring it to life via video. Parents and teachers of kids ages 2-18 in three age groups: (2-10, 11-13, and 14-18) were challenged to create a 60 second video demonstrating a MyPlate inspired healthy eating message and a physical activity tip. Videos were accepted March 9 through April 30, 2015. The video search resulted in over 100 submissions featuring kids across America. From the videos submitted it was clear that food and physical activity can be a fun topic for kids.

This spring, kids from across the country honed their culinary and nutrition skills to participate in the Healthy Lunchtime Challenge, and the wait is over to find out who received the top spot from each of the 50 states, four U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia. The winners of the 2015 Healthy Lunchtime Challenge have been announced on Let’s Move’s! website. Find out who the top kid chef is from your area and the recipe that secured them a seat at the White House for the Kids’ State Dinner with First Lady Michelle Obama.

On May 15^th, the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion was pleased to take part in the judging of this year’s top two recipes from each area along with representatives from Let’s Move!, the Department of Education, Wholesome Wave Foundation, and most importantly – other kids, including previous winners of the Healthy Lunchtime Challenge and recent graduates from Share Our Strength’s Cooking Matters program. The judges met at the DC Convention Center to personally taste test each of the top dishes, 108 dishes in all! The dishes were prepared by DC Central Kitchen staff and were rated on a scale of 1-5 based on: nutritional value, taste, creativity, originality, affordability, and an essay accompanying the recipe. Kids were also encouraged to reference ChooseMyPlate.gov and incorporate foods from each of MyPlate’s five food groups in their entries.

As part of Asian American and Pacific Islanders Heritage Month, the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP) is pleased to announce the translation of the ChooseMyPlate 10 Tips resource and MyPlate icon from English into 18 additional languages. The Office of Minority Health, of the Department of Health and Human Services (OMH/HHS), and CNPP co-branded the translated tip sheet and are working together to promote these newly translated documents to ensure that individuals, nutrition and health professionals, and other community leaders have access to these helpful resources.

“Because the nation’s Asian American and Pacific Islander population is incredibly diverse, the new MyPlate resources will be useful tools to reach an even wider audience with easy-to-understand nutrition guidance,” said Capt. Samuel Wu, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Health Policy Lead for the Office of Minority Health.

As registered dietitian nutritionists, we love to see MyPlate in action!  MyPlate was created as a familiar mealtime symbol that helps people learn about choosing a variety of healthy foods within all the food groups.  It is a foundation which can be built upon to reach any audience where they are and in ways most impactful for them.  We find it exciting to see how MyPlate comes to life when it's used in the marketplace and very much appreciate all those who are using MyPlate in innovative ways from in-store promotions and food packaging to MyPlate nutrition education programs, materials, songs, social media campaigns, and the list goes on.

Calling all budding chefs! Do you like to cook and make healthy food for your friends and family? If so, you might be able to show off your skills and creativity to the First Lady of the United States and your peers from across the country. Learn more about how you can represent your state at the Kids’ “State Dinner” at the White House this summer.

First Lady Michelle Obama, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Education, and WGBH Boston invite you to enter the fourth annual Healthy Lunch Time Challenge & Kids’ “State Dinner.” Check out the past events here on the Let's Move! website and get inspired to participate in this year’s challenge.

Even if you’re not among the 68 percent of U.S. adults who are overweight or obese, many consumers are striving to get a leg up on their nutritional health. Some of the simplest government facts can inspire consumers to better nutrition.

U.S. nutrition experts issue “leading indicators” on the nation’s nutritional health. USDA’s national “What We Eat In America” survey data indicate that dietary fiber intakes among U.S. consumers average only 16 grams per day. The problem is that the daily Adequate Intake for fiber is set at 25 grams for women and 38 grams for men!