WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 (UPI) -- It's the home stretch for the latest version of new Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
Secretaries Sylvia Burwell of the Department of Health and Human Services and Tom Vilsack of the U.S. Department of Agriculture addressed concerns of lawmakers Wednesday in testimony before the House Agriculture Committee.
Members of the panel had specific questions about obesity standards, food portion sizes, low carbohydrate diets, disease prevention, school lunches and sugar intake.
Since 1980, the guidelines have been reviewed every five years by the USDA and HHS. Currently, the 571-page Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee is open to the public. For the new report, there were 29,000 comments from the public, the largest number on any dietary guidelines to date.
The final version is expected to be released in December.
