The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) took another step toward the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, holding its next-to-last public meeting on November 7, 2014. Unlike the September public meeting, dairy was not a significant point of discussion, but the committee raised a number of issues that are important to dairy, including added sugars and sodium.

The committee discussed a recommended limit of added sugars intake of 10 percent of calories. They plan to recommend including the added sugars content of foods and beverages in the Nutrition Facts panel of packaged foods. The label should include grams and teaspoons of added sugar, as well as the percent Daily Value amount, according to committee members. This is slightly different from FDA’s proposed rule on nutrition labeling, which proposed labeling added sugars in gram amounts, but not in teaspoon amounts or with a percent Daily Value level. In comments to FDA, IDFA opposed added sugars labeling.

They also said sodium should be limited, but they saw no reason to set a recommended limit less than 2300 mg per day. However, in order to help Americans lower their sodium intake, they do plan to recommend policy and industry approaches to lowering sodium in the food supply, including re-evaluating the GRAS status of salt and encouraging the food industry to continue reformulation efforts to lower sodium content of foods. These are also approaches that FDA has considered in the past.

Saturated fat will also be addressed in the DGAC report, with recommendations to limit intake. One committee member asked if milk fat should be treated differently in the report, but the committee felt that there is not yet enough nutritional evidence on the health impacts of milkfat.

Additional information about the meeting, with slides and a recording of the meeting to be posted soon, can be found at www.dietaryguidelines.gov.

The DGAC plans to hold its final meeting on December 15. Following this meeting, the DGAC report will be released to the Secretaries of Health and Human Services and Agriculture in early 201.