Dietary Guidelines for Americans

Dietary advice can be complicated. Good quality sources can have conflicting information, pitting one recommendation against another. And that holds t...

A study from the market research firm The NPD Group found that the average American only eats close to the DGA requirements a meager seven days per year. Seen another way, Americans eat according to federal guidelines only 2 percent of the time. But why?

Yet the question (and the problem) that haunted the food pyramid still remains: Is knowing how to fill our plates with fruits, vegetables, grains and protein enough to make us do it?

As soon as epidemiologists started following drinkers and abstainers, they found that drinkers had less heart disease and as a result lived longer.