Twenty nutrition experts, the most ever, will serve on the committee that prepares the 2020 edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). While the departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services make final decisions about what is in the DGA, they seldom diverge from the recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.

The committee is getting a late start but still expects to finish its work in time for the new DGA to be published in late 2020. The first meeting of the experts, most from academic institutions, will be March 27 and 28.

UEP will again participate in the public-comment phase of the DGAC’s work.  In the 2015 DGA, longstanding recommendations to limit dietary cholesterol intake to 300 milligrams per day were dropped because of a lack of evidence connecting cholesterol in the diet to levels in the blood.