Harvard School of Public Health

Harvard School of Public Health

The Nutrition Source of Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) makes the following dietary recommendations:^[20]

• Eat healthy fats: healthy fats are necessary and beneficial for health.^[21] HSPH "recommends the opposite of the low-fat message promoted for decades by the USDA" and "does not set a maximum on the percentage of calories people should get each day from healthy sources of fat."^[20] Healthy fats include polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, found in vegetable oils, nuts, seeds, and fish. Foods containing trans fats are to be avoided, while foods high in saturated fats like red meat, butter, cheese, ice cream, coconut and palm oil negatively impact health and should be limited.^[21][22]
• Eat healthy protein: the majority of protein should come from plant sources when possible: lentils, beans, nuts, seeds, whole grains; avoid processed meats like bacon.^[23]
• Eat mostly vegetables, fruit, and whole grains.^[20]
• Drink water. Consume sugary beverages, juices, and milk only in moderation. Artificially sweetened beverages contribute to weight gain because sweet drinks cause cravings. 100% fruit juice is high in calories. The ideal amount of milk and calcium is not known today.^[24]
• Pay attention to salt intake from commercially prepared foods: most of the dietary salt comes from processed foods, "not from salt added to cooking at home or even from salt added at the table before eating."^[25]
• Vitamins and minerals: must be obtained from food because they are not produced in our body. They are provided by a diet containing healthy fats, healthy protein, vegetables, fruit, milk and whole grains.^[26][24]
• Pay attention to the carbohydrates package: the type of carbohydrates in the diet is more important than the amount of carbohydrates. Good sources for carbohydrates are vegetables, fruits, beans, and whole grains. Avoid sugared sodas, 100% fruit juice, artificially sweetened drinks, and other highly processed food.^[24][20]

Other than nutrition, the guide recommends staying active and maintaining a healthy body weight.^[20]

Others

David L. Katz, who reviewed the most prevalent popular diets in 2014, noted:

The weight of evidence strongly supports a theme of healthful eating while allowing for variations on that theme. A diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention and is consistent with the salient components of seemingly distinct dietary approaches. Efforts to improve public health through diet are forestalled not for want of knowledge about the optimal feeding of Homo sapiens but for distractions associated with exaggerated claims, and our failure to convert what we reliably know into what we routinely do. Knowledge in this case is not, as of yet, power; would that it were so.^[27]

Marion Nestle expresses the mainstream view among scientists who study nutrition:^[28]: 10

The basic principles of good diets are so simple that I can summarize them in just ten words: eat less, move more, eat lots of fruits and vegetables. For additional clarification, a five-word modifier helps: go easy on junk foods. Follow these precepts and you will go a long way toward preventing the major diseases of our overfed society—coronary heart disease, certain cancers, diabetes, stroke, osteoporosis, and a host of others.... These precepts constitute the bottom line of what seem to be the far more complicated dietary recommendations of many health organizations and national and international governments—the forty-one "key recommendations" of the 2005 Dietary Guidelines, for example. ... Although you may feel as though advice about nutrition is constantly changing, the basic ideas behind my four precepts have not changed in half a century. And they leave plenty of room for enjoying the pleasures of food.^[29]: 22

Historically, a healthy diet was defined as a diet comprising more than 55% of carbohydrates, less than 30% of fat and about 15% of proteins.^[30] This view is currently shifting towards a more comprehensive framing of dietary needs as a global need of various nutrients with complex interactions, instead of per nutrient type needs.^[31]

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