You are listening to midday addition. What we eat has a lot to do with how healthy we are. Last week the USDA came out with a new set of guidelines. During the rest of our midday a good -- addition we will take a look at what the advice is. Journey to talk about that subject are Cheryl Anderson and Sonja Tupper. Cheryl Anderson is associate professor of preventive medicine at the school of medicine. She was also on the advisory committee for the current guidelines. Cheryl thank you. It is great to be here. Sonja Tucker is a quality improvement director at Trent nine Trent 9 Community Ctr. -- La Maestra. Based on the guidelines, give us an example of a healthy meal. Before we dive into what a healthy meal might look like it will be helpful for our listeners to know what the key proponents -- components are. Me quickly cover those. Following overall health pattern across the lifespan, making sure all food and beverage choices are carefully paid attention to. Using a variety of foods and making sure the amount of food on the plate is carefully thought through. The nutrition -- nutritional value is high and complete. We also want to ensure that a shift -- some things that are now -- not as helpful. Culture and food preferences are important in terms of thinking about what is on the play. Typically, your breakfast lunch and dinner should reflect foods that you like to eat. If they don't reflect as you like to eat you are unlikely to sustain a healthy way of eating overtime. They should taste good -- patient also be good for you. One question I want to ask about the guidelines, how have they evolved? When you look at these compare to five musicals what is different with my Today we focus on patterns -- guidelines have been looking at food and nutrients. People don't consume nutrients and they don't condone -- consume will learn that in patterns. The responsibility of more than just the individual in making food choices. Here we have to be thinking about how do you ensure regardless of where you live or learn or work -- you can have a helpful and take. Businesses, schools, churches -- all around organizations are thinking about how we accomplish this. Is talk about one specific thing. Sugar consumption. What are the new dietary Thailand's about that. The guidelines encourage Americans limit their added sugars intake to no more than 10%. That is actually a new component of the guidelines were added sugars get addressed, saturated fat is also address. That should be lower than 10% of the total caloric intake. Sodium in the diet is addressed and that needs to be lower --. It sounds like there is a 10% guideline for both saturated fats and sugar, no more than 10% of your diet should be either of those. What is a saturated fat compared to a fact that is not so bad for you? Saturated versus unsaturated fats -- some common examples of foods that might be higher in saturated fats might be pizza or a hamburger. People might have been -- pasta in a cream sauce. Some viable alternatives -- don't eat five slices of pizza, only one or two. Supplement that lunch with a solid or healthy grains and fruits. You might also be thinking about passes -- pastas that have unsaturated oil bases like olive oil. Sonja let me get you involved in this discussion. How does La Maestra use these guidelines? We have to use them since we want the best for our patients. I have to say, I completely agree with everything the professor is saying. We need to be very conscientious of the fact that our patients come from different backgrounds. We want to make sure that we [Indiscernible] the foods , that we make them delicious for them to eat it but also healthy. Instead of asking or telling the patient do not eat X or Y -- this is what you would like to do. How can we change that and provide them with examples that they can eat, also good things that taste good. Moving them away from red meat for a hamburger, you can make a hamburger at home that are made out of white meats. Instead of having it on a bun, the patient can learn how to do it in letters. To move away from the mayonnaise and you can add a little bit of -- olive oil. So it is good, it is delicious and we teach our patients depending on their background, whether they come from America or Southeast Africa or Asia, how they can supplement with good and delicious foods. I can imagine what were going to say in response to this. What are the health problems that come from eating the wrong types of food? Maybe we need a whole another segment. Everything starts -- as a kid. We are seeing a lot more child obesity. We are same type II diabetic in pediatrics which we were not sing 10 or 15 years ago. High blood pressure -- obesity in adults. Diabetes in general. Higher issues -- heart issues. Cholesterol issues, and younger generations. So we definitely need people like Professor. to bring up all of this issues with diet. So that we can get the information to our patients. It is a change in culture that we have to do. We are working diligently to ensure our patients don't ever forget that this is how you need to eat. La Maestra is definitely working on that and developing curriculums that will help with that as well. Cheryl Anderson what would you like to add to that? What are the health problems that come from not eating right? Over half of Americans right now have some sort of a preventable condition that is both related. In the process of formulating the guidelines that was one of the foundation issues being addressed by the guidelines. These are foods and recommendations with patterns recommendations that will be helpful in reducing obesity and type II diabetes. Hypertension -- diabetes and hypertension flow into cardiovascular diseases. Want to think about the fact that overall these things are permissible, here in San Diego there are 3 health behaviors responsible for the top 4 conditions that lead to death. Those three are? Use of tobacco, inappropriate diet, and physical inactivity. My guests are Cheryl Anderson and Sonja Tucker -- Sonja you have nutrition classes. Absolutely. We do have nutrition classes. Not only that but we also have -- I was just talking to the professor before we walked in. La Maestra is very -- we type help with environmentally conscious actions. One of the things we do at La Maestra is we have a pantry for the patients. If the patient says I don't have the money to eat healthy -- sometimes they think it is cheaper to eat not healthy. So we take them to the food pantry. We have someone who is standing with them teaching them what they can use from the food pantry. We have all natural products -- fruits, vegetables, no sugar added anything. A lot of what people eat these days are processed foods. If you're trying to cut down the amount of sugar you are eating -- if you eat processed foods you will get a lot of sugar. Are you teaching people to read labels? Absolutely. There are health educators that all have bachelors in nutrition. They are capable to teach how to read a label. Sometimes we just focus on calories, but we need to make sure they also look at the components -- the difference between natural sugars that come from fruits and added sugars. We try to reduce the consumption of added sugars in our diets. Getting back to the subject of the new USDA dietary guidelines, are there some guidelines of the past that have been revised? Are there some tools we used to think were terrible that we now don't think are so terrible? One major revision this year is the lack of a focus on the cholesterol guideline. Meaning dietary cholesterol -- based on the science that dietary cholesterol has limited impact on blood cholesterol's. The other chefs I've mentioned before -- this really explicit consideration of food preferences and cultural issues. In terms of what it is we expect people to eat, the type of chefs we expect them to make. We also explicitly address added sugars, saturated fat and sodium. We talk about the importance of industry and the impact these guidelines have on the way that industry might reformulate food so we can meet our goals. This opens the epidemic we have had for quite a wild in the United States -- we have been over its over it. We have had many conversations about it. One question that always occurs to me -- when you look at the problem of obesity, is that the content of what people are eating or is it the volume? It is both. Diets -- in general you think of an equation for energy balance. What goes into the body must go out. Individuals might take 15 minutes to consume a certain amount of calories -- a high amount of calories. That is going to take 60 minutes of intense exercise to burn. We find ourselves unable to balance the equation. The quality of the diet is also important for body composition as well as body size. Sonja why don't you chime in. I just imagine if you are reducing the amount of calories you eat isn't that enough? Not necessarily. It is not only the amount of calories but the quality of the calories you are consuming. I think definitely, making sure -- we talk about this, we are what we eat. If we eat well -- our body is going to be well fed. It is easier to say if you eat 100 or 200 cal that come from added sugars, it is not the same if you eat 200 cal that come out of fruits. The other issue is that weight is not the only thing that matters. Cardiovascular health and reduction of risk factors related to other conditions is also important. Whether or not your weight is adequate but your metabolic health product -- profile is not affected by the quality of those you are consuming not just the quantity. These days people are busy, and we have working mothers were asked in the old days a mother might stay home and spent most of her time making food. Do people say to you I don't have time to make a healthy diet? Is that an issue? It is definitely an issue. Another one we have mentioned a couple of times is also how diverse all cultures are especially here in California. We definitely try to take into consideration all of those factors. That is why even though we're trying to assist a whole population, certain organizations we are really trying to focus on one. That is why we decided, having a health education department that would focus on that particular part, that can assist what barriers our patients half to make sure they achieve what they are looking for is important. We have been talking about the new dietary guidelines from the USDA. I guess have been Cheryl Anderson. You Cheryl. Sonja Tucker is quality improvement director at La Maestra community health centers. Thank you Sonja.
The new American Dietary Guidelines published Thursday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture include a reduction in the amount of added sugar and saturated fats people should consume daily to fewer than 10 percent of daily calories each. The USDA also recommends limiting sodium to less than 2,300 milligrams per day.
Based on the guidelines, what should be on the average San Diegan's plate at breakfast, lunch and dinner? How will following the USDA guidelines impact health?
Cheryl Anderson, an assistant professor of preventive medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine who also sat on the scientific advisory committee for the 2015 Dietary Guidelines, and Sonia Tucker, quality improvement director for La Maestra Community Health Centers discuss the new guidelines Monday on Midday Edition.
