The new dietary guidelines released this week maintain dairy foods’ central role in American diets and highlight all it brings to the table, including high-quality protein, healthy fat, vitamins and minerals.
The guidelines continue to recommend three servings of dairy per day for those consuming a 2,000-calorie diet. They also explicitly endorse full-fat dairy consumption, including whole milk, a marked departure from previous guidelines that only recommended low- and non-fat milk. Additionally, while the new guidelines do state that one meal should contain no more than 10 grams of added sugars, the naturally occurring sugar in milk is acknowledged as not counting toward that amount.
“These guidelines encourage consumption of dairy nutrients critical to human health,” said National Milk Producers Federation President and Chief Executive Officer Gregg Doud. “Meanwhile, not all fats are created equal, and because the guidelines acknowledge this, dairy’s benefits are better reflected in this iteration of the guidelines.”